New York State Education department 

• £TW 

ADDRESSES AND PAPERS 



BY 
ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B. LL,D 
Commissioner of Education 



I9O9-I9IO 



ALBANY, N, Y 



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New York State Education Department 



ADDRESSES AND PAPERS 



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ANDREW S. DRAPER, LL.B., LL.D. 
Commissioner of Education 



I9O9- I9IO 



ALBANY, N.Y. 



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CONTENTS 

PAGE 

The Call of the Flag 3 

The Lake Champlain Tercentenary 6 

The Hudson- Fulton Celebration p 

Schools and Municipalities I2 

Dedication of New Buildings of the State Normal College 16 

The Relative Educational Standing of New York State 29 

Motive in Education 4 e 

Public Morals and Public Schools 61 

The Church Influence in Education - A 

The Essential Groundwork of Industrial Training 85 

The Lay Influence in School Management IO i 

New York Colleges and the State System of Education n 2 

The Lincoln-Douglas Debates T ^g 

Election as Commissioner of Education 167 

The Law of Equipoise ; I7 g 



D. OF D. 

SFF 12 .-no 



THE CALL OF THE FLAG 

The strong colors and the glorious beauty of the American flag 
express well the overwhelming fact of modern history — the evolu- 
tion of the American Republic. Wherever it may be, the flag is 
both attractive and assertive. In the home the colors do not clash 
with other colors. If they do not blend, neither do they repel. In 
the remotest distance the flag may be seen above every other object 
and distinguished from every other flag. The red and white stripes 
standing for the original states, and the silvery stars representing 
the Union, radiate and scintillate as far as the eye can reach. Far 
or near, the American flag is true and sure, brilliant and radiant, 
cordial and independent. 

It is a modern flag. There are no myths or legends, no ruins or 
heraldry, no armour or castles about it. It expresses the political 
independence of a plain people, the advance of a new nation, the 
self-conscious power, the confident aspirations, and the universal 
good will of popular government. 

What has been said of the flag has largely been inspired by war. 
Souls must be aflame to give out oratory and poetry. The flag has 
many times been at the battle front. The sight of it has inspired 
many a boy to do and die for his country. It was in the crucial 
campaign of the Revolution, that for the possession of New York, 
beginning at Fort Schuyler, continuing at Oriskany, and ending 
with the surrender of Burgoyne's entire army at Saratoga, that the 
flag was first given to the air in the face of an enemy. In this 
state it began to gather the deep love of a free people. That love 
has since grown deeper and yet deeper through the hail and flame, 
the heroisms and deaths, of an hundred battles. It is sad that war 
had to be, but for us there was no other way. Independence of 
Britain could not come by arbitration. The Union could not be 
saved by negotiation. Fighting is bad business, but there are times 
when it is better than submission. The strength and courage 
of a people are the guardians of their peace, of their freedom, and of 
their progress. The perils, the sufferings, and the heroisms of the 
country have made the literature of the flag. 

But the flag of the American Union, now as never before, tells 
of toleration and of good will, of education and of industry. It has 
welcomed millions from all nations of the world and has held out 

Introduction to State Education Department publication on The American 
Flag, June 1910. 

[3] 



4 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

the equal chance to all who came under its folds. Every new star 
added to its blue field has told of a new state, and every new state 
tells of more farms cleared, more factories opened, more churches 
and schools set in motion, and more laws and courts to regulate 
them all and to assure the equal rights of every one. 

Out of the equal chance of freemen, out of the farms and forests 
and mines, out of the majestic rivers and charming valleys and 
lofty mountains, and out of the bracing air that is filled with sun- 
shine, mighty public works and marvelous institutions of culture 
have sprung. Railways and roadways, tunnels and aqueducts, 
newspapers and magazines, theaters and art galleries, cathedrals and 
universities, have grown. They are the products and the promoters 
of civilization and they give strength and stateliness to the flag. 

The American flag has looked down upon the writing of more 
constitutions and the making of more laws than any other flag in 
history. Some of this lawmaking has been crude, and perhaps 
some of it has been mistaken, but it has been both the necessary ac- 
companiment and the stimulating cause of our wonderful national 
evolution. 

As man does so is he. All of these industrial, educational, reli- 
gious, and political doings have produced a new nation of keen, alert, 
sinewy, and right-minded people, who have power and know it. They 
have the traits of a young nation. But they are lacking neither in in- 
trospection, nor in imagination, nor in humor. More knowledge of 
other peoples than their fathers had and increasing responsibilities 
are sobering and steadying them. In their dealings with other 
peoples they intend to be just, frank, magnanimous. Their political 
philosophy is only the logical outworking of the Golden Rule. They 
have undoubting faith in democracy and would exemplify it in ways 
to commend and extend it. 

The American flag expresses a glorious history, but it does not 
hark back to it overmuch. It looks forward more than backward. 
It calls upon us to do for this generation and to regard all the 
generations that will follow after. It knows that some time there 
will be five hundred or a thousand millions of people in the United 
States instead of one hundred millions. It expects still greater 
public works and many more public conveniences. It sees better than 
any one of us does how hard it will be for such a self-governing 
people to hold what belongs to them in common, and to manage 
their great enterprises without frauds and for the good of all. 

The people of the United States are not only the proprietors of 



THE CALL OF THE FLAG 5 

great natural possessions; they are inheritors of the natural rights 
of man, fought for by their ancestors in the mother country, 
granted in the great charters of English liberty, and established in 
the English common law. They have added to this what seemed 
worth taking from other systems of jurisprudence and from the 
manifold experiences of other lands ; they have proved their capacity 
to administer their inheritance, and to their natural and political 
estates they have added the experiences of their own successful and 
notable national career. The flag not only adjures us to guard what 
we have in property and in law, but to train the children so that 
the men and women of the future may administer their inheritance 
better than we have ours or than our fathers did theirs. 

The flag does more than emblazon a momentous and glorious 
history; it declares the purposes and heralds the ideals of the Re- 
public ; it admonishes us to uphold the inherent rights of all men ; 
it tells us to stand for international justice and conciliation, and 
it encourages us to accept the consequences without fear. It hails 
us to individual duties and the cooperation which alone can maintain 
equality of rights and fullness of opportunity in America. It in- 
sists that we set a compelling example which will enlarge both 
security and freedom, both peace and prosperity, in all parts of 
the world. 

A flag of glowing splendor calls to a nation oi infinite possibilities. 
It calls upon the American people to conserve property, health, and 
morals ; to preach the gospel of work and protect the accumulations 
of thrift; to open every kind of school to all manner of people ; and 
to spare neither alertness nor force in keeping clean the springs of 
political action and in punishing venality in public life. That is the 
call of the radiant flag of the Union to the self-governing nation of 
the western world which is being compounded out of all the nations 
and is creating a new manner of civilization out of all the civiliza- 
tions of the earth. 



LAKE CHAMPLAIN TERCENTENARY 

There is reason enough for the two great celebrations which 
the state of New York is to hold in July and September next. 
Lake Champlain and the Hudson river were discovered and ex- 
plored in the same year, 1609, the lake in July, and the river in 
September. Each took the name of the discoverer. Champlain 
was a French sea captain, in the service of France, and Hudson 
was an English sea captain, in the employ of the Dutch. 

Lake Champlain is about ninety miles long in a straight line. 
In width it varies from a half mile to fifteen miles. It has about 
fifty attractive islands. Its shores are broken by innumerable bays 
and inlets. The Adirondack mountains form the background on 
the New York side, and the Green mountains on the Vermont side. 
On the shores of the lake and at the foot of the mountains there 
are many fine towns and pretty villages, and a great number of 
sumptuous summer homes. The lake has been well stocked with 
fish, and the surrounding forests abound in game. Magnificent 
steamers and beautiful sailboats and pleasure yachts traverse its 
waters. Excellent railroads skirt its borders. It has come to be 
a playground for the whole nation. Taken altogether, it makes 
one of the most attractive and impressive regions to be seen any- 
where in the world. 

Celebrated as Lake Champlain is for its natural beauty and its 
energetic life, it is even more celebrated for its history. Song 
and story and legend, forts and battlefields, heroisms and tragedies 
which stir and appall mankind, and victories of the utmost im- 
portance to America and to all civilization, are all associated with 
Lake Champlain. It is hardly too much to say that upon its beau- 
tiful waters the American navy was born, that it witnessed the 
contests which decided that the Iroquois and not the Algonquins 
or the Hurons, that civilization and not savagery, that the English 
and not the French, that the Republic of the United States and not 
the British Empire, should be dominant, successively, in the western 
continent. 

Lake Champlain, with the Hudson, forms a natural highway of 
momentous import from the Atlantic ocean to the St Lawrence 
river. The Indians knew this road well and followed it much. 

Written for the Lake Champlain Tercentenary pamphlet issued by the 
State Education Department in honor of the celebration, July 4-10, 1909. 

[6] 



LAKE CHAMPLAIN TERCENTENARY 7 

They could paddle their canoes, by carrying them overland only 
twenty miles, all the way from the mouth of the Hudson to the 
St Lawrence. If they followed the trails along the shores, they 
encountered no elevation of more than one hundred and fifty feet 
above the level of the sea. The rival tribes often fought for the 
possession of these waters and this road. It was the " dark and 
bloody ground " and became the great warpath of the Iroquois, 
who controlled it until they met white men. The French, who 
came with Champlain, and the Dutch who came with Hudson, and 
the English who followed him, soon found this great highway 
between the north and the south. They took it from the Indians, 
only to fight for it between themselves. Whether English or 
French civilization was to be uppermost in America had to be de- 
cided by war. Vessels were built and a little navy was constructed. 
Bloody campaigns surged over these waters and along these trails 
in northern New York. Thousands perished through hardship and 
battle. Old Ticonderoga saw the English triumph. Soon the war- 
path of the Iroquois became the veritable warpath of the Revolu- 
tion. Again the battle coursed back and forth along Lake Cham- 
plain. Now Canada was English instead of French, and from their 
homes at the north and their base of supplies at New York the 
armies of Britain sought to join forces upon this road and sever 
the patriots of New England from their fellows in the Middle and 
the Southern States. Again Ticonderoga, Crown Point, and Platts- 
burg became invaluable strategic points, and once more they and 
all of the Champlain valley were at the very vortex of the dread- 
ful forces of war. The control of this great thoroughfare was to 
determine the issue of American independence; the first British 
forts seized by the Patriots were up<_>rt u s and upon it, near Sara- 
toga, the most strategic battle of the Revolution was fought, and 
the most overwhelming victory of the Patriots was won. 

In the war which confirmed American independence the Cham- 
plain country was again the vantage ground. An invading army 
of fourteen thousand men, half of whom were regulars and vet- 
erans fresh from British battles in France and Spain, was driven 
back by New York militiamen at and around Plattsburg. In Platts- 
burg bay the Americans fought the severest naval battle and won 
the most decisive naval victory of the war. Before the onset the 
American commander called the crew of the flagship to the quarter- 
deck and prayed for the victory which the gallantry of the little 
squadron speedily gained. In the battle of Plattsburg bay there 



8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

were fifty-two Americans killed, and upon two of the vessels there 
was hardly a man who was not wounded. Not less than two thou- 
sand Americans have given up their lives in battles upon and about 
Lake Champlain in order to create and protect American 
institutions. 

These events make the Champlain country even more sacred to all 
patriotic Americans than it is fascinating to all the world. All the 
men and women of our state, and all the boys and girls in the 
schools should study the details of the history which I can here 
no more than suggest. The celebration, which will occur in the 
week commencing with the 4th of July, must not be a pastime alone. 
It should quicken the minds of all the people of the state of New 
York with an interest in the beautiful valley and the particular 
places where great events have happened. The way to do that most 
completely is to do it through the children in the schools. The 
teachers are asked to cooperate with the state in accomplishing 
this end. They are particularly asked to dwell upon the horrors, as 
well as the heroisms, of war. Nations are more rational, and wars 
are happily less common than they used to be. France, our early foe 
and our long-time friend, has now many worthy descendants in the 
Champlain valley ; and to them we will express our gratitude for the 
vital aid which their country gave to our struggling cause. Old 
Britain and the United States have come to understand each other 
better and respect each other more, and now they will meet upon 
historic ground to enter into a yet more absolute union for the 
peace, security and progress of the world. 

This celebration is being arranged jointly between the states of 
New York and Vermont, and it is to be participated in by the gov- 
ernment and the people of the Dominion of Canada. Everything 
said and everything done will be in the interests of universal good- 
will. This does not imply that we must forget, or that we must 
omit to speak of, what has helped to break out the highways of 
civilization and open the way for the advance of democratic free- 
dom and independence. Let the lesson be of what our fathers were 
obliged to do and to suffer; of our obligations to make the most 
of what they transmitted to us, and of our purpose to do all that we 
may for the good of our country and all mankind. 

While it is not practicable to name any one day for holding exer- 
cises in the schools, it is suggested that teachers take frequent 
occasion to speak upon the subject; that the children be induced to 
read and write about it, and that, before the close of the schools 
for the year, an afternoon be taken for exercises calculated to create 
interest in the theme and in the celebration. 



THE HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION 

The state of New York is arranging an elaborate celebration 
in honor of the Hudson river and of the great events associated 
with its waters and its shores. The celebration will begin on the 
25th of September, 1909, and continue at different points and with 
varying features to the 9th of October. Wednesday, September 
29th, will be the Educational day of the celebration. 

The time chosen is the three hundredth anniversary of the first 
exploration of the river by Captain Henry Hudson, in the little 
sailing ship " Half Moon," sent out by the good people of Holland. 
It is a little more than a hundred years from the time when Robert 
Fulton, in the " Clermont," proved that steam power might be relied 
upon to propel boats. 

The Hudson river has borne many names. Some of the Indians 
called it " Mah-i-can-i-tuk," which meant the " place of the 
Mohicans," and others, " Ca-ho-ha-ta-tea," or " river that flows 
from the mountains." The Dutch named it the " Mauritius " in 
honor of Prince Maurice, the great son and successor of William 
the Silent. The French called it " La Grande river," and the 
Spanish, the " River of the Mountains." The English more often 
gave it the name of the "North river" (the Delaware being the 
South river), and by that name it is frequently called now. But 
the popular sense of justice came to call it " Hudson's river," and 
that finally settled down to the " Hudson river." The common fair- 
ness has now been confirmed by many laws. 

None of its great names has been too good for it. It is a splendid, 
deep, free-flowing stream. It is the outlet of great mountains and 
magnificent valleys. It has tides all the way to Troy. It is 
bordered by beautiful slopes and stately peaks ; by the Palisades, a 
great stone wall fifteen miles in length; and by thrifty cities and 
splendid residences as well. In picturesqueness, in always changing, 
and quickly changing, views, it is hardly equaled by any other river 
in America or in the world. 

It is a river which has long been useful and dear to a great and 
prosperous civilization. Although Hudson sailed for the Dutch, he 
first made known his discovery to the English; and although the 
English king required him, an English subject, not to leave the 

Written for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration pamphlet, issued by the State 
Education Department in honor of the celebration, September 25 to October 

9, I909- r . 

[9] 



IO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

English service again, the Dutch were the first to establish trading 
posts and settlements upon the Hudson river. The Dutch were a 
iittle people, but in some things they were greater than the largest. 
In manufactures and trade upon the sea, in fighting power, and in 
schools of all grades and kinds, they were then the foremost nation 
in the world. They had just had a forty years' war and had laid 
down a hundred thousand lives for liberty. It had made them the 
freest nation in the world. Of course, they brought their personal 
traits and their national feeling to the Hudson. For full fifty years 
those traits and feelings had their free opportunity in " New 
Amsterdam " and " New Netherland," and of course they have a 
large share in the foundational history of the state of New York. 
Just as Hudson was exploring, and Dutch settlers were beginning 
to locate upon the Hudson river, our Pilgrim forefathers were 
hunted out of England by religious bigotry. They were welcomed 
in Holland. A dozen years later they migrated to America, in- 
tending to settle upon the Hudson, but were landed upon the Massa- 
chusetts coast by reason of bad weather or the captain's fraud. The 
Pilgrims and the Dutch had common feelings and cordial relations. 
Neither had any love for the king and the Royalists in England, 
who in 1664 sent an armed fleet and took possession of New Am- 
sterdam and called it New York. In the meantime, twenty or thirty 
thousand English Puritans, and some Royalists, had settled in New 
England. A few had come over into New York. They were up- 
right, religious, intolerant, autocratic, aggressive people. The 
English knew much, very much for their day, about human rights. 
They had fought for their rights within as well as without the 
kingdom. They had set limits to the power of the king. They 
brought " Magna Charta " and a good system of laws and of courts 
to America with them. They were divided among themselves and 
had, the Royalists particularly, much friction with the Dutch. But 
by the time the English Puritans and the Dutch had combined their 
forces and overwhelmed the English government in the American 
War for Independence, and by the time they had forced the British 
armies to surrender and had driven the Royalists or " Tories " 
out of the country, they were fused into a united people. They had 
learned to tolerate each other, and to tolerate other people also. 
They welcomed people from all the nations. Working together, they 
became generous-minded and made the great qualities of each even 
greater than they were before. Out of it all came the " Empire 
State " and other great states and the great Union of the states. 



THE HUDSON-FULTON CELEBRATION II 

All this and much more, in infinite detail, is associated with the 
valley of the Hudson river, and must be made much of in our 
celebration. There is not a point upon the river, not a stream or 
a valley that leads into it, not a peak that looks down upon it, that 
is without its legend and its story. War, with its horrors and its 
heroisms, has had a large part in it. Treason left its stain upon it. 
Learning, literature, the arts and sciences, agriculture, manufactures, 
banking, law, politics, statesmanship, have run as freely in the 
Hudson valley as the ever-flowing waters of the river. 

The first school in the United States ; the first federal Congress ; 
the initial and the decisive battles of the Revolution; and the ap- 
proval of the federal Constitution were in sight of the Hudson. The 
convention that framed the first state Constitution of New York was 
forced by the British army up the river from New York to White 
Plains, then to Harlem, then to Kingsbridge, then to Odell's in the 
Philipse Manor, then to Fishkill, then to Poughkeepsie, and then to 
Kingston, where, with the scales of justice in one hand and the 
drawn sword in the other, on Sunday, April 20, 1777, it completed 
its splendid work, only to have advancing war at once compel it to 
move again. 

Let us think of what the names of Clinton, Tompkins, Yates, 
Woodhull, Gansevoort, Schuyler, Tallmadge, Root, Scott, Liv- 
ingston, Duane, VanCortlandt, VanRensselaer, particularly Hamil- 
ton and Jay, and a host of others, signify in the early history of the 
Hudson ; let us think of the teachers, and preachers, and scholars, 
and writers, who have wrought upon its shores; let us enter into 
the enlightened policy of the state which long ago made it the 
greatest highway of travel and commerce in the country, and let 
us have a share in the new purpose that such it shall remain forever. 
■ The schools may do more than any other agencies to put red 
blood and a true spirit into the coming celebration. New York 
has never been very generously treated — it has sometimes been 
badly treated — by the professional writers of American history. 
Let us enter in no haphazard or half-hearted way into a great 
celebration which is being arranged to arouse a keener appreciation 
of the doings of our fathers. Let the pupils read much of the 
history which makes the Empire State so great. Let them write 
upon it. Let the exercises upon the 29th of September be public 
and popular, the worthy expression of a fine school system, and the 
vital inspiration of a great state. 



SCHOOLS AND MUNICIPALITIES 

At the joint hearing upon the education chapter of the proposed 
New York City Charter, held by the cities committees of the Legis- 
lature on the 6th inst., Senator McCarren very pertinently asked 
why the management of the schools should not be through a de- 
partment of the city government, as well as the management of 
the police service, or the fire service, etc. The answer was not 
given as completely as it seems to me it should be. 

The reason is that the state constitution [art. IX, § i], directs 
that " the Legislature shall provide for the maintenance and sup- 
port of a system of free common schools." The Constitution does 
not require the Legislature to provide for the maintenance and 
support of policemen, or firemen, or street cleaners. The federal 
Constitution omitted all reference to the education of the people, 
evidently because that was deemed to be a matter for the states. 
All states have assumed control over it. It has not been left to 
inference or implication. Every state has erected a state system 
of education, by positive provision in its Constitution and laws. In 
no case has a state permitted it to become a matter for a munici- 
pality, as such, to deal with. Often a state has utilized the ma- 
chinery of a municipality to care for some interest of the schools, 
but that has been only for convenience or from the necessities of 
the case. 

Following the mandate of the Constitution, the state has enacted 
general educational laws and constituted general educational au- 
thorities for the specific purpose of assuring adequate and suitable 
schools in every part of the state. The state has constituted a 
local educational organization for every rod of its territory, which 
local organization becomes a part of the state's general educational 
system; but if the people of any city or district, through such local 
organization, omit to maintain schools, or maintain inadequate or 
inefficient schools, the law and the authority of the state at once 
step in to provide them. Ordinarily the local interest in education 
is sufficient for all ends. Commonly, there is enough good sense 
in a community to prevent the use of the schools for other than 
educational ends. The American spirit is generally to be relied 
upon to carry out the state's educational plan according to its 
letter and intent. But it is not always so. 

Comments on the proposed changes in the education chapter of the 
New York City Charter, April 8, 1909. 

[12] 



SCHOOLS AND MUNICIPALITIES , 13 

In every part of the state, and ever since the educational system 
began to grow, the public schools have been part and parcel of the 
state system, designed to assure equality of opportunity to all the 
people of the state. The New York State Constitution throws 
upon the Legislature direct and immediate responsibility for the 
maintenance and support of a system of schools " wherein all the 
children of this state may be educated." This of course charges 
the Legislature with responsibility for a system of schools which 
shall be suitable and adequate for the purpose named. It has come 
to be fundamental that the educational system is a state system, 
and in no sense a municipal system. Public education is completely 
differentiated from those municipal activities for which the mu- 
nicipal government should be charged with primary responsibility. 

This state raises by tax, and pays from its treasury, something 
like $7,000,000 a year for the support and maintenance of its edu- 
cational activities. Where the money of the state goes, the respon- 
sibility, care and direction of the state go also. This is not the 
mere theory of an education officer. It is fixed by the holdings 
of the courts of last resort in all the states where the subject has 
had the advantage of judicial determination. There is no lack of 
determinations to this effect by the Court of Appeals of the State 
of New York. There are no well considered legal authorities op- 
posed to this fundamental principle of the educational system. It 
is the only principle upon which a reasonably efficient educational 
system may be assured in all parts of a state. 

The New York State Legislature has uniformly observed this 
principle in the making of laws, whenever laws have not been 
smuggled through the Legislature without real consideration. The 
Legislature has also observed this principle in the interpretation, 
as well as in the making of laws. The state Constitution provides 
that no person shall be eligible to the Legislature who at the time 
of his election is " an officer under any city government." In 1876 
a school inspector in the city of New York was elected to the 
state Senate. His seat was contested on the ground that as such 
school officer he was an officer under the government of New York 
city. The Senate decided that the Board of Education of the City 
of New York was possessed of powers and liable to the perform- 
ance of duties not of a local character, and hence was not under 
the city government. The charter of the city of Albany, through 
a piece of legal bungling, enumerates members of the Board of 
Education among the city officers. A member of that Board of 
Education was elected to the Legislature. His seat was contested 



14 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

on the ground that he was constitutionally ineligible. After full 
consideration of the subject, men of all parties in the committee 
of investigation agreed that, notwithstanding the provision in the 
Albany City Charter, a member of the Board of Education was 
not and could not be a city officer, and therefore was not ineligible 
to the Legislature, and the House adopted the report without 
dissent. 

In view of all this, the provisions in the proposed New York 
City Charter, including members of the Board of Education in the 
list of city officers, and specifically constituting the education de- 
partment an administrative department of the government of the 
city of New York, are both meaningless and confusing. 

The education laws of this state, and of many other states, have 
provided for the appointment of members of the Board of Educa- 
tion by the mayor — not because he is mayor, but in spite of that 
fact and because he is the only general officer upon whom it seems 
at all feasible to confer the power of appointment. Upon the 
whole, appointment in that way has perhaps worked as well as the 
creation of the board in any other way would have done. But 
the provision in this proposed charter, that the mayor may remove 
any member of the Board of Education at his pleasure, is a vicious 
novelty in legislation which has never been invented until now. 

It goes without saying that the educational system must neces- 
sarily be separated just as far as may be from the political activi- 
ties of a municipality. Of course, there are likely to be points of 
inevitable contact. No one has been disposed to complain much 
about the school budget going to a central board of estimate and 
apportionment for consideration with other public expenditures, 
because of the almost imperative necessities of the case. But any 
arrangement which empowers any board or officer of the city to 
fix or change a teacher's salary, or to do anything else bearing 
upon the freedom and efficiency of the schools, and which does 
not give the management of the schools absolutely and completely 
to the officials who are chosen for that particular purpose, ought 
to be stoutly resisted by every one who is interested in the welfare 
of the schools. 

The provision in the proposed charter that the Board of Educa- 
tion of the City of New York shall not possess the powers or 
privileges of a corporation, taken in connection with many other 
provisions, to some of which I have only alluded, submerges the 
educational interests of the city in the corporation and the politics 



SCHOOLS AND MUNICIPALITIES v 1 5 

of the city itself. That would take away all vestige of educational 
independence. It would deprive the people of the city of New 
York of important educational rights which the rest of the people 
of the state of New York enjoy. 

In a word, the educational chapter of the proposed charter is 
drawn upon a theory which has never been legally established, 
which is repugnant to universally established legal and educational 
theories of the country, and which is absolutely antagonistic to the 
interests of education. 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 

Mr President, Governor Hughes, and teachers, students, 
graduates and friends of the State Normal College: The manage- 
ment of this old and excellent institution has peculiar pleasure 
in the aid of this distinguished company in these dedica- 
tion exercises. The attendance of the Board of Regents and of so 
many of the leading school superintendents of the state is gratify- 
ing. The presence and the words of Governor Hughes are inspir- 
ing. The school has had influential friends all its life. The act 
creating it was signed by Governor William C. Bouck. The 
appropriation for its first real home was signed by Hamilton Fish; 
that providing for the second building by Grover Cleveland ; that 
providing for these beautiful buildings by Governor Frank Wayland 
Higgins ; and that for their furnishings and equipment by Governor 
Hughes. In fact, there has been no governor or legislator in many 
years who has not had the opportunity to do something for us. 
We acknowledge all these favors in the hope of other favors yet 
to come. 

It is sixty-five years since the state established this institution. 
New York was the first state to appropriate moneys for the train- 
ing of teachers, but not the first to establish a separate state normal 
school. As early as 1818 Governor DeWitt Clinton recommended 
some rather fanciful schools for the training of teachers, which, 
however fanciful, contained the real fundamentals of the present 
normal school system. In his succeeding annual messages for ten 
years he evinced his deep interest in the subject, and for another 
ten years his successors, Van Buren, Throop, Marcy, and Seward, 
discussed it with political caution and educational enthusiasm that 
were mixed by masterful hands. The idea of separate normal 
schools was taking form, but it was opposed by strong forces, for 
the colleges and the academies and the Regents were against it. 
Azariah C. Flagg, a great superintendent of common schools from 
1826 to 1833, favored separate normal schools. John A. Dix, an 
equally great superintendent of common schools from 1833 to 1839, 
was with the academies and the Regents. So was his distinguished 
successor, John C. Spencer. In 1827 the Legislature, evidently 
upon the initiative of Clinton, added $150,000 to the literature fund 
" to promote the education of teachers," and in 1834, at the instance 

Address at dedication of new buildings, October 28, 1909. 

[16] 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 1 7 

of Dix and the Regents, it passed an act providing for a " normal 
department " in one academy in each of eight judicial districts. 
Sharp disagreements and futile efforts at the unification of the 
dual system of school administration were in the air even then. 
In 1839 Massachusetts received a gift which induced her to set up 
the first state normal school upon an independent footing in the 
country. Public opinion gradually came to the support of this plan, 
and in five years the New York Legislature decided to try it in co- 
operation with the other which had theretofore been adopted as the 
exclusive policy of the Empire State. In 1844 the first normal 
school of the state, under whose splendid new roof we meet today, 
was established. 

In the succeeding half century, ten similar state schools were 
established, and with them a system of city training schools. The 
training classes which had been introduced into the academies had 
been many times multiplied and carried into one or more union 
schools in nearly every county. All these, in connection with new 
pedagogical departments in the colleges and universities and with 
our uniform system of examining teachers, comprise a compre- 
hensive plan for securing capable teachers which is quite unique in 
American education. 

At the beginning the state appropriated $10,000 for the normal 
school upon the understanding that the city of Albany would pro- 
vide a building, and in the following summer the city placed at its 
service for five years the building between State street and Maiden 
Lane, just east of Eagle street, which had recently been vacated by 
the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad Company. It has been remod- 
eled several times, but some of the original building remains. It 
is now known as Van Vechten Hall. The city paid $1000 per year 
for five years for rent, and $500 toward preparing the building for 
use. The state paid over $3000 to get the place in condition. Even 
that was better for the state than is usual when the state and a 
city undertake to share expenses. The school was opened Decem- 
ber 18, 1844. Tuition and books were free, and board was nearly 
so. Male pupils were paid one dollar per week, and female pupils 
one dollar and a half per week, to induce attendance. None will 
dispute the propriety of the discrimination. Twenty-nine students 
came at the beginning, and before the close of the term there were 
one hundred. 

In 1848 the lot at the corner of Lodge and Howard streets was 
secured for a permanent building, and the state appropriated $25,- 
000 for the very spacious structure, with flights of stairs that were 



1 8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

as long and steep as ladders, which was used from 1849 *° l &&5- 
The records tell us that two plans were prepared, that one was more 
ornamental and required $700 more than the other, and that the 
more ornamental and costly was taken. This building is now 
owned by the Roman Catholic Church and is occupied by the 
Christian Brothers Academy. I myself sold the same to the 
present owners at public auction, at the front door of the Albany 
City Hall, on March 6, 1886, pursuant to section 1 of chapter 280, 
Laws of 1885. In January 1883, the present vice chancellor, Dr 
McKelway, and I had become members of the board in charge of 
the school, and at the first meeting we heard the statement that the 
walls were out of plumb, that the building was cracked and in 
danger of falling, but that little must be said of it lest the attend- 
ance of pupils might be affected. Refusing the custody of such an 
exclusive and cheerful secret, we drew a resolution for the Senate, 
directing the finance committee to inquire and report as to the safety 
of the old building. In a few days the committee, upon the advice 
of a firm of Albany architects and the chief engineer of the Albany 
fire department, reported that the building was menaced by quick- 
sand and that the walls had settled and cracked; that "there is no 
immediate danger of a catastrophe, but that danger is inevitable at 
an uncertain time in the future unless measures are taken to avert 
it." That was twenty-seven years ago, but even yet the old build- 
ing looks us right in the face and stands up bravely for education. 

The measure to avert the possible " catastrophe " appropriated 
$125,000 for a new site and building. The site on Willett street 
was picked out of a dozen that were offered. The building there 
erected was much criticized. Its external architecture was com- 
monplace, though not specially bad, and its internal arrangement 
was intolerable. But the president of the school and two of the 
five members of the board had trained me to think as they did 
in earlier days in the Albany Academy, and continued it even then. 
I fear Dr McKelway had no such excuse. When, from my front 
porch, I saw that ill formed and ill fated sclioolhouse go heaven- 
ward in flame and smoke, on that keen winter evening in January 
1906, I was as officially affected as was proper, but my personal 
grief was not of the kind which is altogether uncontrollable. It 
surely would have been greater, however, could all the troubles over 
plans for the new buildings have been foreseen. 

The Legislature of 1906 appropriated $350,000, with an unex- 
pended appropriation for additional land on Madison avenue 
amounting to some $17,000, together with the insurance upon the 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 19 

old building amounting to $75,000, for the new structures. The 
act authorized an exchange of sites : that is why we are here rather 
than at the other end of our beautiful park. It authorized " a fire- 
proof building or buildings " : that is why there are four of them. 
It provided that the plans should be prepared by the State Archi- 
tect, subject to the approval of the Commissioner of Education and 
the trustees in charge of the college : that is why these particular 
buildings are here. 

The site which we occupied on Willett street was never sufficient, 
and more room was needed. We had for several years been acquir- 
ing separate adjoining parcels of land on Madison avenue, with a 
view to securing all of them, but as our purpose was divined the 
remaining lots came to possess about as much value in the minds 
of the owners as if there were a gold mine or a well of oil under 
them. The prospect was not encouraging, for, aside from the cost, 
the situation was not well suited to our purposes. Then a fortu- 
nate opportunity presented itself. The Albany Orphan Asylum had 
occupied the site where we now are for more than eighty years. 
At the beginning it was out in the country, but the city had grown 
up around it so that it was not as well adapted to the purposes of 
the asylum as it had been, and it had acquired a value which the 
trustees of the asylum wished to convert into better buildings upon 
a less expensive site at the outskirts of the city. An exchange of 
properties was effected. The trustees of the asylum took our old 
site and sold it, and conveyed this site to us in consideration of a 
difference of $75,000, and then acquired their new site at the south- 
ern end of Lake avenue, and erected their beautiful new buildings. 
It was an arrangement very satisfactory to all the parties in inter- 
est, and manifestly for the good of the college, the asylum, and 
the city. 

Using the amount received from insurance to secure this more 
eligible site, we had about $367,000 for new buildings. The Legisla- 
ture thought the appropriation very liberal, but it was evident enough 
from the beginning that to secure the needed space and accommo- 
dations, we would have to dispense with costly or ornamental con- 
struction. Yet it was as necessary that we have attractive buildings 
as spacious ones. The time is here when one who has anything to 
do with the erection of a public building is bound to see that it is 
architecturally effective as well as practically useful; and one who 
permits the erection of a public building, and particularly a con- 
spicuous state school building, without assuring good architecture 
and without making the most of the opportunity to promote the 



20 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

interests of art among the people, deserves nothing but censure for 
his ignorance or his indifference. 

There was much trouble and delay about agreeing upon plans 
for the new buildings. Possibly the story ought to have been placed 
in a cornerstone of the building, and quite as likely it is one of the 
things which it is as well to have forgotten. Certainly there is no 
occasion to repeat it now ; and there would have been no reason 
to mention it but for the inconvenience and distress which it in- 
flicted upon this institution for a number of recent years. 

In the midst of the delay there was one episode which may well 
be mentioned and ought to be instructive to young men. In the 
summer of 1906, when the scheme for the architectural competi- 
tion upon the State Education Building was being developed, Mr 
Albert R. Ross, a young architect, came into the Education Depart- 
ment and showed me photographs of several beautiful and striking 
buildings which he had designed. His words were modest and 
sane. He made an impression. Six months later, when the issue 
over the designs for the Normal College buildings had become 
sharp and we were almost at the end of our resources, I wrote Mr 
Ross that I could guarantee him no definite employment or com- 
pensation, but appealed to his patriotism and professional spirit to 
come and see if he could help us. His home was in New York, 
but the next morning he called me by telephone from Boston, 
thanked me for the mere opportunity to aid us, and said he would 
be here on the following day for whatever he could do. I showed 
him the designs of the Woman's Building at the University of Illi- 
nois, and colored prints of the front elevations of the main build- 
ings of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. These were 
all by the New York architects, McKim, Mead and White. To my 
gratification, he told me he had helped design the plans for the 
University of Virginia and was in love with them. He thought the 
architecture admirably adapted to our situation and needs. He 
studied the site and said he would give us a sketch in two weeks. 
It came on schedule time and was highly pleasing to all the mem- 
bers of our board. It represented these buildings essentially as 
they stand today. Discussion led to minor changes, and in two 
weeks more he brought us a beautiful finished sketch, which has 
now been exactly executed. But before the Ross designs could be 
adopted, the whole matter had to have the final arbitrament of the 
legislative committees, and it had to have, as it did have, the helpful 
aid of Comptroller Martin H. Glynn. 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 21 

The interior plans were worked out most acceptably by President 
Milne and State Architect George A. Heins, and the supervision 
of construction was under the competent care of Mr Franklin B. 
Ware, who succeeded to the office of State Architect upon the very 
regrettable death of Mr Heins. 

It would be wholly unjust to omit to say that no such large work 
was ever executed with less friction between owners and contrac- 
tors. The A. E. Stephens Company, of Binghamton, have done 
their work without bluster or complaint. The changes from the 
plans were very few, and the contractors were at all times anxious 
to help us realize our highest expectations. There is satisfaction 
in the feeling that we have buildings which we can like, and that 
the state has its money's worth without having had to use a big stick 
or go to the courts to get what belonged to it. And if the con- 
tractors have gained the reasonable profit to which their work en- 
titles them, all concerned will be heartily glad of it. 

As to the finances of this undertaking, we are upon strong 
ground. The garment was cut according to the cloth. There are 
no balances on the building account. We have used practically 
every dollar. There are and will be no deficiencies. The appro- 
priation for furnishings and equipment was liberal and just. The 
enthusiastic faculty scheduled up a demand for $109,000. The Edu- 
cation Department asked for $50,000 and got it. The amount went 
through the legislative committees with only the ordinary pleading, 
and Governor Hughes approved it without frightening us, when it 
was well known that he was looking hard for things to veto. It 
has furnished the building with what it needs and supplied a good 
equipment for the teaching. It has put the walks and grounds in 
order, and for this a good German gardener is entitled to just as 
much credit as the rest of us. It has even topped everything out 
with a fine flagstaff and a beautiful flag, 

" With the red for love 
And the white for law 

And the blue for the hope that our fathers saw 
Of a larger liberty." 

We turn our thoughts now from the building to the life of the 
school. This delightful situation and these beautiful and impressive 
buildings would seem a dream to us if we were willing to' be dream- 
ers. We have longed for them and waited doubtfully. We can 
hardly realize it all. But we are not dreamers : they are real. We 



22 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

are to enter a new epoch, seize a new opportunity, and make new 
history. 

When this first normal school of the state was established, edu- 
cational theory was young and feeble. It was just opening one eye 
to the fundamental doctrine of normal schools. There were schools, 
but not a system ; branches, but not courses ; recitations, but not 
schedules. Even trained and disciplined teachers were few, and 
there was little public recognition of the need of specially prepared 
teachers in the common schools. Institutions and instruments for 
training such teachers were wholly lacking. More than that was 
true. If we were to admit that " he who knows a subject can teach 
it," there was still no adequate provision for training teachers, for 
there was a lack of advanced schools of any kind. There was not 
a university in the land. There were a few colleges, but only a 
few young men, and no women, went to them. Laboratories were 
unknown. Even books were scarce, and few of what there were 
appealed to youth. We were essentially an agricultural people. A 
few proprietary " seminaries," and more academies, which in spite 
of good intentions were necessarily exclusive, held aloft the flicker- 
ing lights of the more liberal learning. There were no public high 
schools. Surely there was need enough of a normal school. Re- 
gardless of the later day refinements of educational theory, there 
was room enough for a tax-supported and free advanced school, 
call it by whatever name they would. And so in the beginning 
there were not many to take exception, and probably no exception to 
be taken, to whatever kind or grade of educational work the normal 
school might do. 

This is all changed now. There are a half dozen universities and 
a score of colleges in this state alone. One hundred and sixty- 
two of the old academies continue. A public high school — 691 in 
all — has grown up in practically every town; and where there is 
none, the pupils may go to a neighboring school and the state will 
pay the tuition. Then there is every manner of endowed and in- 
corporated school that special professional or scientific needs, or 
religious zeal, or commercial energy can suggest, to say nothing 
of the polishing schools for the rather exclusive girls, and the mili- 
tary schools for the rather swift boys. And all of these are filled 
with all the libraries and apparatus and illustrative appliances that 
genius and liberality can bring to our hands. And out of it all 
has grown up an organization to make sure that no delinquent 
community shall be permitted to go without the advantages of it. 

Normal schools do not have to teach elementary branches of 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 23 

knowledge as they used to be obliged to do. They get, or if they 
are proficient will get, an abundance of students who are better 
prepared for advanced work than those who used to come. It is 
good policy to leave all of the instruction possible to the local 
schools, and to pursue in the state schools only such necessary work 
as the ordinary schools can not or do not do. If that is done, the 
state normal school may, if they will, make greater headway in 
the philosophy and the art of teaching, and they may respond to 
the reasonable expectation that they shall provide the inspiration 
and leadership needed by the elementary schools. 

But we are confronting new situations which call for new plans. 
Our public schools seem about to undergo some very marked 
changes in organization and procedure. It is to be hoped that every 
child in the state will be brought into a school and kept there until 
he has acquired the essential elements of an English education. To 
have that so, and to provide for other necessary training, the essen- 
tials of an English education will have to be covered in less than 
eight years, and the work will have to be of a kind which will 
make it clearly worth the time of the child to remain to the end 
of it. This is likely to prove difficult but by no means impossible. 
When it is accomplished, all the children may well go from the ele- 
mentary schools to more advanced schools, as a very small number 
of them do now. When that is effectuated, opportunity will be 
much enlarged, many more children will gain by it, and the state 
will be the stronger for it. But before it can be effectuated the 
pupils will not only have to be ready for a more advanced school, 
or a secondary school, at a somewhat earlier age than now, but the 
secondary schools will have to be of kinds which will suit the needs 
of all children, or at least of a very much larger proportion of the 
children, and which will keep the intellectual and the industrial 
activities of the state in reasonable equilibrium. 

There is reason enough to think that this is neither fanciful nor 
remote. We are very rapidly developing a great system of sec- 
ondary schools which will separate at the very beginning into three 
clearly differentiated divisions. One of these will be the literary 
and classical divisions, such as we now have, and will lead to what 
we used to regard as the professions, and to general culture. The 
second will train for trade and commerce. And the third will train 
workmen, both those who work collectively and with machinery 
owned by the shop, and those who work individually and with their 
own tools. It is not difficult to believe that the time is' not remote 
when the employers of labor will require that employees, and the 



24 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

more advanced technical schools will require that freshmen, shall 
have the training of these industrial schools just as the literary 
colleges and the intellectual and scientific professions require that 
their beginners shall have the training of the literary or classical 
schools of secondary grade. 

So teachers must be trained for these different divisions of sec- 
ondary schools. Whether it would be good policy to undertake to 
train teachers in the State Normal College for all three of these 
divisions is doubtful. The teachers for the industrial division will, 
it would seem, have to be trained very largely in shops, because 
those schools will have to depend upon the equipment, and the ways 
and the atmosphere of the factory and the shop. At least it would 
seem that they will have to be trained in schools that are much like 
shops and in a community that is much interested in mechanical 
and constructive employments. For this and other reasons it has 
occurred to me that it might be well to begin to shape the Buffalo 
Normal School for training teachers for the distinctly industrial 
schools. But, whatever plans may be determined upon in that re- 
gard, it is clear enough that we have reached the point where the 
distinct functions of the state schools should be somewhat closely 
defined. Specialization is as needful to the highest efficiency of a 
school as of an individual looking to expert service ; and economy 
of time and money for the state, the school, and the individual, 
will be promoted by it. The state normal schools should have very 
definite work and be equipped with reference to' it, and apparently 
there is no doubt that nearly or quite all of them must be expected 
to bear the burden of training the best teachers for the great ele- 
mentary school system. 

But there is a distinct need in our educational system for which 
no adequate provision has been made. That is better training for 
teachers in the secondary school system as it now exists or may 
develop. Our high schools grew from the ground up. They did 
not, like the academies, come from the colleges down. Indeed, 
many of the high schools have but one, two, or three years of the 
high school course. It is not strange that not all of the people, nor 
all of the boards of education, have appreciated these scholastic 
needs. There is not only lack of appreciation of these needs ; there 
is lack of provision for them. There is a sort of hiatus right here 
in the American educational system, and possibly because of the 
manner of our high school evolution, it is more pronounced in New 
York than in many of the states. It must be accepted that the least 
the high school teachers require is the training of a college. The 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 25 

normal schools are not broad enough or deep enough in subject- 
matter to train high school teachers. They can not be made so 
without neglect of the elementary schools or without a cost to the 
state which is unnecessary and would be unfruitful. The ele- 
mentary schools and the secondary schools are much differentiated ; 
their teaching is upon very different footings. The secondary 
schools have advanced to a point where they claim teachers of a 
distinctly different training than either the normal schools or the or- 
dinary colleges provide. But that is not all. Most of the colleges 
train for nearly every other professional employment better than 
for teaching. They are not very hospitable to pedagogy, anyway. 
Indeed, not a few of the college and university men deny that there 
is any such thing as a science of teaching. But they are in a decided 
minority. The weight of opinion in this country, and in all coun- 
tries where education is advanced, is against them. Therefore, the 
training of supervisory school officers and of teachers in the sec- 
ondary schools requires not only a college, but a pedagogical college. 

That function and duty have been devolved upon this institution. 
Its age, its individuality, its long history and special traditions, its 
independent government, and its location at the capital, supply the 
reasons for that. Almost twenty years ago, long before there was 
any very distinct point about it, the Board of Regents gave it a col- 
lege charter and authorized it to confer the bachelor's, master's, 
and doctor's degrees in pedagogy. In very recent years the fur- 
ther action of the Board of Regents has given real point to this 
distinction which, years ago, the prestige of the old school brought 
to it. First it was made a college. Later it has been given a spe- 
cial mission, necessary to the state, and which required a college 
for its performance. 

Of all states, New York sets its ban upon high grade educational 
names for low grade institutions. It does not permit the title 
" college " to be used by any institution, much less a state institu- 
tion, which in fact is not a college. Our statute requires that a 
college must have property of the value of $500,000. It so hap- 
pens that there is more than that value in these lands and buildings. 
But that is far from all. There is no better college endowment 
than the support of an American state. But this state will not 
provide that and then permit academic degrees to be conferred in 
its name without an ample basis of learning. 

To make a real normal college out of a normal school, some old 
features must be put away and some new ones added. It is harder 
to make an institution over than to make a new one. Courses 



26 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

suited to those who intend only to teach in the elementary schools 
may be discontinued. So also may primary practice schools. The 
admission requirements must be advanced to a level with those of 
all the good colleges, and then exactly enforced. It takes more 
conscience and force to enforce requirements than to adopt them. 
Courses of four years in the liberal arts and pedagogics must be 
offered. Every graduate must have four years' work of college 
quality in the accepted studies of a liberal education, and such 
professional courses as are deemed to be fundamental in the liberal 
training of teachers. And, in every way, the institution must be 
enveloped in the academic atmosphere, take on the academic forms, 
and perhaps assume the academic airs, of a college. 

Neither here nor at any other state school has the prosperity 
of tradesmen or the growth of the town any legitimate relation to 
the subject. If the institution is highly efficient, students will mul- 
tiply and the town will get the benefit of it. But that is wholly a 
secondary matter. Proper economy of expense and clean-cut edu- 
cational efficiency are the primary considerations. 

This is to be a pedagogical college. It is to give a liberal training 
to men and women who will be teachers. It has not heretofore 
advanced as might have been desired, but there has been reasonable 
excuse. It is not intended that it shall grow into a state university. 
Only a pedagogical college is in mind, and nothing short of that 
can be accepted. It is not only to teach ; it is to study. It is not 
only to train ; it is to investigate and try to add to the sum of ped- 
agogical knowledge and experience. It is to dig deep, and, if pos- 
sible, more deeply than others have yet done, into the sciences which 
relate to life, into the philosophies which bear upon the thinking 
of mankind, and into the most efficient ways for transmitting these 
things to others. 

This college is not to be content with the external forms : it is to 
get into the substance of things that have to do with education. 
If there is anything the matter with New York education, as I now 
and then suspect there is, this institution ought to be the first to 
tell us what it is. Its great field is to be found in the educational 
system of the Empire State. If we generally accept the theories 
of the normal schools about methods and management and disci- 
pline and practice teaching under critic teachers, we need not accept 
all of them for the more advanced work of the normal college. 
There need not be so much made of methods, because the students 
will be more mature and advanced, will know something about the 
forms of organization and of teaching, and will have come to the 



THE STATE NORMAL COLLEGE 27 

time when they must have serious work of college grade and be 
free to apply it and exploit it in the great educational system of 
the state, rather than in selected or special schools, if their expec- 
tations are to be met. 

The difficulties have been serious. It is a wonder that this college 
has held together at all through the four years that we have been 
trying to carry on the work in three or four places, and without 
the libraries, laboratories, classrooms and appliances that such an 
institution imperatively requires. But now the day of jubilee has 
come, and every one having anything to do with the State Normal 
College must move up to a higher plane, that the old school may 
meet the newer and heavier and holier burdens which the state of 
New York is placing upon it. 

A splendid history ought to incite us. David P. Page, and George 
R. Perkins, and Samuel B. Woolworth, and David H. Cochrane, 
and Joseph Alden, and Edward P. Waterbury, were great teachers 
and natural leaders of schools. William J. Milne is such a teacher 
and such a leader. They and others like them have here trained 
more than twenty thousand men and women to fine and heroic 
service. 

When the Civil War came, this school sent a fine company of its 
men, with Professors Kimball and Husted in command, into a 
famous regiment — the " People's Ellsworth Regiment," the 44th 
New York — to fight the battles of the country. It was inspired 
by the lamentable and heroic death at the very outbreak of the war 
of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, who lies buried only twenty miles 
from here. I remember, when a boy, seeing that regiment go down 
lower State street. It was distinguished from all the other regi- 
ments by the white moccasins worn by the men. It was a selected 
regiment of tall men. In it there were many men of the schools. 
It was so strong in numbers that it filled the street from the old 
Capitol to the Exchange, with the company fronts stretching from 
curb to curb or even over the sidewalks. That broad street has 
seen many military pageants to be remembered but it never wit- 
nessed a scene that will be remembered longer or more vividly than 
when that regiment halted for a moment to receive from the hand 
of Mrs Erastus Corning the flags it was to carry through Antietam, 
and Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg, and the 
Wilderness, to Appomattox. When the regiment came back, the 
street was wide enough for its numbers, but it was then distin- 
guished by more than white moccasins and tall men. To have had 
an heroic part with that regiment gives this old school a special 



28 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

right to float a fine flag upon its campus. But let us not forget 
that women as well as men, and more of them, have gone out from 
this school to give a sacrificial and resultful public service, which 
must quicken the pulse beats and give zest to what is to be under- 
taken now. 

Starting out in the old Mohawk and Hudson Railroad building 
on State street the school was there five years. It was in the build- 
ing erected upon " the more ornamental plan " thirty-four years. 
It was in its last home on Willett street twenty-three years. For 
nearly four years it must have felt like an orphaned and homeless 
child. It must now feel proud in this fine new home, so pure and 
so truly American in its architecture that the lovers of classic art, 
and of classic art as seen through American eyes, will be glad to 
travel far to see it. Pride in home is no mean inspiration. Here 
may the State Normal College live long and prosper ! 

To the uses of the higher learning and the betterment of the 
higher teaching, to the upbuilding of a great college of pedagogy, 
and to the service of a noble state, we set apart these grounds and 
these buildings, and to all that and more we dedicate the life within, 
for a thousand years ! 



THE RELATIVE EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW 

YORK STATE 

There is no harm in a little reasonable boasting of the state of 
New York; but that is not the thought of this paper. Com- 
parisons are not odious if made to ascertain what one ought to 
do. The effort will be to make a just comparison of our educa- 
tional situation with that in nine other leading and representative 
states, to see in what we lack more than in what we have a 
surplus. 

The states selected are Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, 
Michigan, Illinois. Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri and California. 
More could not be taken without unprofitably extending the 
inquiry. These are taken because they are all good strong- 
states, not remote from our latitude, and well known for their 
educational activities. Absolute exactness of figures is not 
claimed. This is not the work of a professor of civil engineer- 
ing. There are no needles to meet under the North river, and 
millions of money are not to be predicated upon my deductions. 
The figures are from the United States Bureau of Education 
Reports for 1907 and 1908, or directly from the states, and are 
sufficient for our general purposes. 

There are no very marked differences between the kinds of 
people who have settled these 10 states. In the pioneer days 
when the educational plans were taking form, New York was 
doubtless more heterogeneous than any of the rest, and so con- 
tinues. AM have felt the common impulses of our American 
civilization. The Western States have been intellectually less 
hidebound and they have known how to use their political 
power rather more freely than the Eastern States; they have 
used it for educational ends ; they have had the benefit of the 

Address at the 47th University Convocation of the State of New York, 
Senate Chamber, Albany, October 29, 1909. 

[29] 



?o 



NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 



experiences of the older states and the advantage of laying their 
educational foundations without being obliged to grub out any- 
other foundations, and after it was settled that education was 
to be the passion of the Republic. 

No doubt density of population has some relation to educa- 
tional efficiency, where conditions are so generally alike as in 
our American states. Of course the presence of very large 
cities must be kept in mind. The following table shows average 
density of population: 



I 


Cal 


2 


Minn .... 


S 


Mo 


4 


Mich. . . . 


S 


Ill 


6 


Iowa. . . . 


7 


N. Y... . 


8 


Penn .... 





Ohio 


IO 


Mass. . . . 



Total. 



United States. 

Total to 

United States 



AREA 
SQ. MI. 



158 360 

83 365 

69 415 

58 9i5 

56 650 

56 025 

49 x 7° 

45 215 

41 060 

8 3i5 



626 490 



3 6l <5 484 



I approx. 



3 

4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 

10 



N. Y. 
Penn. 
111. . . 
Ohio. 
Mo. . 
Mass. 
Mich. 
Iowa. 
Minn. 
Cal. . 



POPULATION 



386 
032 
518 

497 
405 
083 
611 
201 
071 
675 



673 
9i5 
190 
198 
901 
013 
790 

33i 
3i8 
211 



40 483 540 



85 526 761 



47% 



3 
4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 

10 



Mass . . 
N. Y.. 
Penn. . 
Ohio. . 
111.... 
Mo. . . . 
Mich.. 
Iowa. . 
Minn. . 
Cal. . . 



POP. OF 
EACH 
SQ. MI. 



371 

171 

156 
no 

£97 
49 
44 
39 

1.25 
11 



64 



24 



The number of pupils in school per square mile was: Massa- 
chusetts 62, New York 27, Pennsylvania 27, Ohio 20, Illinois 17, 
Missouri 11, Iowa 10, Michigan 9, Minnesota 5, California 2. 

The percentage of the population in school was : Iowa 24, 
Missouri 22, Minnesota 21, Michigan 20, California 20, Ohio 18, 
Illinois 18, Pennsylvania 17, Massachusetts 17, New York 16. 

The average number of days the schools were in session was : 
New York 189, Massachusetts 187, California 171, Iowa 170, 
Illinois 169, Michigan 169, Pennsylvania 168, Ohio 160, Minne- 
sota 145, Missouri 145. 

The average number of days attended by each pupil enrolled 
was: Massachusetts 153, New York 145, Michigan 137, Illinois 
132, Pennsylvania 127, California 126, Ohio 121, Iowa 117, Min- 
nesota 108, Missouri 96. 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 



-u 



The percentage of enrolled pupils in daily attendance in 1907 
was: Massachusetts 81.8, Michigan 80.8, Illinois 78.3, New York 
yj, Pennsylvania 76.2, Ohio 75.9, California 73.9, Michigan 72.6, 
Iowa 68.8, Missouri 67.9. 

The following table gives us some light: 



NO. 


STATE 


TEACHERS 


NO. 


STATE 


% MEN 
TEACHERS 


NO. 


STATE 


MONTHLY 
SALARY 


I 
2 

3 
4 


N. Y. 
Penn. 
Iowa. 
Ill . . . 




41 197 

33 449 
28 508 
28 083 
26 517 
17 847 
17 286 
14 449 
13 928 

9 7i4 


I 
2 

3 

4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 


Ohio. . 
Mo . . . 
Penn. . 
111. . . . 
Mich. . 
Cal . . . 
N. Y.. 
Minn. . 
Iowa. . 
Maw 


31-9 
28.3 
22 . 7 
I9.8 

14-5 
J 3-i 
n-5 
"■3 
10 .9 
8.6 


I 
2 

3 
4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 


N. Y.. 
Cal. . . 
Mass. . 
Mo. . . 
Iowa. . 
111... . 
Minn. . 
Penn. . 
Ohio. . 


$88 88 
80 54 
66 73 
48 31 
46 48 
46 36 
46 26 
43 28 
41 79 
40 12 


5 
6 


Ohio. 
Mo.. . 




7 
8 

9 
10 


Mich. 
Mass. 
Minn. 
Cal. . . 












Tota 


I 


230 978 




17.8 




$54 87 








United States. . 


481 316 




21.7 




$50 30 








% to 

Stc 


tal Uni1 
ites. . . . 


;ed 


48 











The following table is informing but possibly not very perti- 
nent to our inquiry : 

ESTIMATED VALUE OF ALL PUBLIC SCHOOL PROPERTY [b. E. I907]. 
TOTAL REVENUE FROM FUNDS, TAXES AND OTHER SOURCES (EX- 
CLUDING BALANCES AND PROCEEDS FROM BOND SALES ) 



NO. 


STATE 


PROPERTY 


NO. 


STATE 


INCOME 




N. Y 


$157 536 256 

83 457 418 
069 141 580 
61 944 637 
56 782 999 
36 680 310 
30 944 034 
27 846 833 

26 OOO OOO 

24 950 104 


I 
2 

3 
4 

5 
6 

7 
8 

9 


N. Y 

Penn 

Ill 


$54 646 490 
36 970 311 
30 958 130 
21 571 478 
17 757 672 
15 259 737 
II 619 405 
II 084 697 

10 9*3 730 
10 853 212 


2 


Penn 




Ill 


4 


Mass 


Ohio 

Mass 

Mich 

Iowa 

Minn 

Cal 

Mo 


5 
6 


Ohio 


Cal 


7 
8 


Mich 


Mo 


9 

10 


Minn 


Iowa 








Tota 
Unitf 


1 


$575 284 171 




$221 634 862 


id States 




$858 655 209 




$355 016 173 









a 1905-6. 



?2 



NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 



The following table, showing the number of pupils in second- 
ary schools — public and private — of each state, and the 
number of persons in the population to each secondary pupil, is 
both informing and pertinent : 



NO. 


STATE 


STUDENTS 


NO. 


STATE 


ONE 

STUDENT TO 


I 


N. Y 


109 807 
69 362 
66 973 
61 842 

55 052 
40 388 

37 799 
36 826 
32 679 
26 666 


1 
2 
3 
4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 
10 


Cal 


52 persons 
54 

57 


2 


Penn 


Iowa 


3 

4 


Ill 


Mass 


Ohio 


Mich 


5 


Mass 


Ohio 


74 
78 

79 
84 
95 


6 


Iowa 


N. Y 


7 
8 


Mich 


Minn 


Mo 


Ill 


9 

IO 


Cal 


Mo 


Minn 


Penn 1 . . . . 


Tota 

Unit 


1 








537 394 




77 


ed States 




954 720 




91 









So is this table, showing the same information as to pupils in 
the higher institutions, i. e. institutions above the secondary : 



NO. 


STATE 


STUDENTS 


NO. 


STATE 


ONE 

STUDENT TO 


I 


N. Y 


28 405 
25 566 
24 8l2 

17 413 
14 967 
13 032 
12 632 

10 953 
8 984 

8 025 


I 
2 

3 

4 
5 
6 

7 
8 

9 

10 


Mass 


179 persons 
189 




Penn 


Cal 




Ill 

Mass 




4 


Mich 


203 
226 


5 
6 


Ohio 


Ill 


Mich 


Minn 


264 
276 
279 
301 
3°4 


7 
8 


Mo 


Mo 


Iowa 


Penn 


9 


Cal 


N. Y 


Minn 


Ohio 


Tota 
Unit 


1 




164 789 




250 


ed States 




298 627 




291 







From this data we may easily say that when we consider 
mere numbers of people or money values, New York leads all 
the rest. That shows the largeness of our problem and that the 
people of the state are trying to solve it, but taken alone it is not 
satisfying. 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 



33 



The fact appears that New York has a longer annual term of 
school than any other state, and that the average number of 
days attended by each pupil is greater than in any other state 
save Massachusetts. In the percentage of attendance to en- 
rolled, she is surpassed by Massachusetts, Michigan and Illinois. 
New York stands 7 in the percentage of men teachers, and 
Massachusetts 10. New York pays a larger average monthly 
salary to teachers than any other state, and this is very signifi- 
cant because she has a longer annual term than any other. 

It is important to know that 5 of the 10 states have a larger 
percentage of pupils to population in the secondary schools than 
we have, and that 8 of the 10 states have a larger percentage of 
college students to population than we. In the latter regard 
Ohio alone is below us, but Ohio has a larger percentage of 
students in secondary schools than we. California, Iowa, Massa- 
chusetts and Michigan each has a larger percentage of students 
in both the high schools and colleges than New York. And in 
addition to these four states, Illinois, Minnesota, Missouri and 
Pennsylvania each has a larger percentage of college students 
than New York. 

The following- table discloses the percentage of pupils enrolled 
in common schools to total population, in the 10 states, by 
decades, since 1870, omitting fractions: 





1870 


1880 


1890 


1900 


I906 


N. Y 


23 
18 

23 
26 

23 
25 
24 
28 
18 
15 


20 

17 
21 
22 
22 
22 

23 
26 
22 
18 


17 
16 

19 
21 
20 

20 
21 

25 

23 
18 


16 
16 
18 
19 

20 

19 

22 
25 
23 
18 


l6 


Mass 


l6 


Penn 


17 
l8 


Ohio 


Mich 


20 


Ill 


17 

20 


Minn 


Iowa 


24 
2 I 


Mo 


Cal 


20 







The number attending to each 100 enrolled in 1906-7 was as 
follows : Missouri 67, Iowa 68, Minnesota 72, California 73, 
Ohio 75, New York 76, Pennsylvania j6, Illinois 78, Michigan 
80, Massachusetts 81. 

The sum per capita expended for schools in 1906-7 was : 
Missouri $2.49, Pennsylvania $4.45, Michigan $4.63, Ohio $4.65, 
Iowa S4.85, Minnesota $5.22, Illinois $5.46, Massachusetts $5.76, 
New York $6.34, California $7.30. 



34 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

While these different sets of figures throw some light upon 
our subject, they are perhaps as expressive of well known 
economic conditions and of the distribution of population 
between city and country, as suggestive of differing measures of 
efficiency in educational systems. 

It is interesting to note that in 1850 we had one teacher to 
each 182 persons in the state, that in i860 it was one to 207, in 
1870 one to 236, in 1880 one to 186, in 1890 one to 141, in 1900 
one to 164 and in 1905 one to 188. 

The percentage of teachers who hold certificates as graduates 
of colleges or normal schools to the whole number of teachers 
is, in Michigan 12, in Pennsylvania 16, in Minnesota 26, in 
New York 33, in California 48, in Illinois 50 and in Massachusetts 
53. This statement includes, as clearly it should, the holders 
of state certificates in New York. It excludes the holders of 
training class certificates. If they were included the percentage 
would be 61. And when it is remembered that admission to the 
training classes is now upon a very substantial academic foot- 
ing, and that all of the lower grade certificates granted in the 
state are based upon uniform written examinations, which is 
probably true in no other state, it is not unreasonable to say, 
that the general average of the teaching force of the state must 
be held to stand very well with that of the other states with 
which we are comparing. 

Apart from the figures, I am going to say that I am confident 
that there is no state better equipped with state normal schools, 
city normal schools, teachers training classes in secondary 
schools, pedagogical departments in universities, teachers insti- 
tutes, and a uniform and universal system for testing and ad- 
vancing the proficiency of teachers, than is New York. 

If it is the fact that no other state has had more difficulty in 
enforcing attendance laws, so it is also the fact that no state has 
more harmonious, complete and exacting child labor and school 
attendance laws than we have. If they are not as effective as 
they should be, it is because of the inefficiency of local officers 
and the indifference of the people. We are improving, in each 
regard, but we ought to improve more steadily and surely. 

It may also be said that the laws of no other state go so far in 
requiring good schoolhouses, suitably equipped with furnishings 
and appliances, as do those of our state. If a building is un- 
sanitary and the people indifferent, it is not difficult to require 
the building to be torn down; if one is lacking conveniences, 
they may be required to be supplied. We are without as effi- 
cient and professional supervision in the rural districts as is 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 35 

possessed by most of the states with which we are comparing, 
but we have a system of inspection by the state which no other 
state carries down to the elementary schools as we do; and any 
citizen may bring" any school question to a speedy, inexpensive, 
conclusive and resultful determination, as is not possible in any 
other state. 

The work in our elementary schools has responded to the 
demands of culture, scientific knowledge, and industry quite as 
completely as the work in any state system of schools. In all 
of the cities and towns few features are. neglected, and if the 
grades have become too many and the courses too complex, as 
many of us think they have, we are doing what we can to sim- 
plify them. 

In recent years the very common sentiment of the country 
has demanded substantial provision for training in the indus- 
trial vocations on the basis of the common schools. We very 
early espoused the cause and developed a plan. We started 
none too soon and pushed none too hard. Massachusetts alone 
preceded us in serious study of the subject, but when she came 
to legislate she made — as it seemed to us at the time and has 
since proved — the vital mistake of separating the proposed 
trades schools from the public schools, and of giving the man- 
agement of the new movement to a distinct state board instead 
of to the State Board of Education. The immediate product 
was an educational ruction which assumed, without success, to 
rival the one in which New York indulged within the memory 
of living men, and the result has been a unification on the very 
lines which New York first invented. While they have been 
doing that, we have been setting up trades schools. It has 
taken time because local sentiment had to concentrate, the 
local board of education had to initiate definite proceedings, and 
the financial machinery had to provide the money. Even then 
the trades school had to be in operation the better part of a 
year before the city could make legal claim to an allotment of 
state moneys under the trades school act passed in 1908. Even 
so, such claims upon the next state apportionment are antici- 
pated from the cities of Albany, Buffalo, Gloversville, Hudson, 
New York, Rochester, Schenectady and Yonkers, as well as 
from a number of union school districts, and other cities and 
districts will get schools started this year and have claims upon 
the apportionment next year. We are fairly started in a move- 
ment of great significance and promise, in substantial advance 
not only of all the states with which we have been comparing 



36 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

but also of all the others. Therefore, while there is, and always 
will be, no end of things to be done to increase the efficiency of our 
system of elementary schools, we may fairly say that, except as to 
our system of supervision in the rural districts, it does not seem to 
suffer in comparison with the system of any other state. 

Now let us speak of the secondary schools. We have 853 
academic departments of public schools, high schools and 
academies. State funds have given these schools an equipment 
of libraries and apparatus which, judging' by the cost, ought to 
surpass any other considerable system of secondary schools in 
the world. In the last 15 years the state has paid out $559,477 
to duplicate the same amount expended for libraries, apparatus 
and pictures in the academies and schools maintaining academic 
departments, and the state pays to a limit of $268 and $2 for 
each teacher employed in the school, for libraries, apparatus 
and pictures, per school each year. Cities which maintain more 
than one high school get an additional allowance of $250 for 
each additional high school. The total expenditures in the 15 
3'ears must have been much in excess of twice the sum named. 

The basis is very slight for comparing the scholarship and 
efficiency of these schools with those of the other nine states 
which have been named. The proportion of college trained 
teachers in the faculties should certainly have some significance. 
New York appears to be the only state of the 10 in which the 
chief educational officer seems to have exact figures. Of the 
6227 teachers who were employed some part of the year in New 
York secondary schools, 3154 — practically one half — are col- 
lege graduates. There is an element of satisfaction in definite- 
ness, even though the information is not sufficiently comforting. 
In Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas 
and California, the proportion is apparently not known, nor is 
the superintendent disposed to try a good guess at it. In 
Massachusetts it is estimated that 1500 of the 1807 secondary 
teachers are college trained; in Iowa that is true of 1000 out of 
1480 teachers; in Minnesota that is true of 1000 out of 1200. In 
New York 410 of 814 principals are college trained, but our 
requests for information upon this point from the other states 
in comparison have not elicited the information, except in Min- 
nesota, where 200 of 206 principals are college graduates. It is 
worthy of remark, however, that in Maine 154 out of 206 prin- 
cipals, in New Hampshire 74 out of 75, in New Jersey 60 out of 
80, and in Vermont 83 out of 87, are graduates of colleges. 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 2)7 

I am forced to. believe that our plane in this very important 
regard is distinctly lower than that of several of the states 
with which we are comparing - . The reason for it would be 
found in the educational history of the state. In Massachusetts 
the college influence has been decisive in the secondary schools 
from the very beginning, because the secondary schools so often 
came down from the colleges. In the states with strong state 
universities which lay out the courses for the high schools, in- 
spect the teaching and approve the teachers, and receive fresh- 
men on the diplomas of the high schools, there is reason enough 
for expecting to find college graduates in the high school facul- 
ties. The smaller proportion in New York is not the fault of 
the teachers, nor is it altogether conclusive upon the standing 
of the schools; but none will deny that it is a fact to be re- 
gretted, nor that it is one that in. some way in the next 20 years 
ought to be very completely remedied. 

It was pointed out yesterday at the Normal College that there 
is something of an hiatus in our system of training teachers, in 
that we have laid no special emphasis upon the preparation of 
teachers for the secondary schools. It is hoped that provision 
for this need may now be made through the Normal College. 
But it ought to be said here that one of the weakest places in 
our system of certifying and employing teachers is the total lack 
of special exactions upon teachers in the secondary schools. 
And it seems to me that at an early day we ought to introduce 
into our plan a distinct demand that teachers hereafter em- 
ployed in the high schools, shall have earned the baccalaureate 
degree from an approved college, or gained a state certificate 
by examination. 

A recent writer in the Educational Review (Mr Alden H. 
Abbott), one trained in the Massachusetts schools, makes a 
very judicial comparison of the Massachusetts and New York 
secondary school systems. He says this, for example : 

" The New York educational system is the most highly central- 
ized one in the United States, while that of Massachusetts is 
nearly at the other extreme. The New York high schools are 
therefore on a somewhat uniform plane of excellence. On the 
other hand, the Massachusetts system of extreme respect for 
the individualism of communities produces some of the best high 
schools in the world and also a few very poor ones." 

He thinks our plan of state aid to high schools is more helpful 
to those standing most in need of help, and that the results are 
somewhat noticeable, and he notes with approval our larger ex- 



?8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

actions as a condition to state aid. The fact is, Massachusetts 
has not been in the business of giving state aid to education as 
much as New York, and in her early efforts in that direction she 
is not giving so much, and has not systematized or grounded her 
giving as well as we have. He speaks of our more complete 
state supervision, and of what he thinks is their better local 
supervision, and also of our stronger control over the licensing 
of teachers. 

We must not delude ourselves with the idea that either the 
Massachusetts or New York high schools are all the good high 
schools there are. Very far from it. But there is satisfaction in 
the confidence that as a system we are upon a fair plane of com- 
parison with Massachusetts, and that our system is noticeable 
for its uniformity of excellence. If we can keep on closing up 
the gaps, making such minor changes here and there as ex- 
perience may suggest, and assuring more and more of the col- 
lege and university influence upon the life of the secondary 
schools, others will be making comparisons with us. 

We may say safely enough that our exactions upon candidates 
for admission to the learned professions have become more sub- 
stantial than, or at least have preceded in substance, those in 
any other state with which we are comparing. New York was the 
first state to adopt the principle that training in an approved 
school is of larger educational value than study by one's self. 
We require long study in the schools, both preliminary and pro- 
fessional, and also the passing of state professional examina- 
tions, and we extend this to all of the professions for which the 
Education Department is made responsible. No other state goes 
anything like so far as we do as to all of the professions. 

The following table will show the quantity of high school 
study required by law for beginning professional study in the 
10 states, as to law, medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, veterinary 
medicine, registered nursing, certified public accounting, and 
optometry. The figures indicate years of high school require- 
ments as measured by New York standards. Where there is 
no statute the fact is indicated by a dash, " n " indicates no re- 
quirement in the existing statute. " o " indicates no high school 
requirement. 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 



39 

















CERTI- 














VETER- 




FIED 








MEDI- 


DENT- 


PHAR- 


INARY 


NURS- 


PUBLIC 


OPTOM- 


STATE 


LAW 


CINE 


ISTRY 


MACY 


MEDI- 
CINE 


ING 


AC- 
COUNT- 
ING 


ETRY 


N. Y. . 

Ill 

Iowa. . 
Ohio . . 
Penn . . 
Mo.... 
Mass. . 
Cal . . . 
Mich . . 


4 

4 
4 
4 


4 
4 
n 
4 
4 
4 
n 
n 
4 


4 

n 
n 
n 

3 
n 
n 
3 

4 


I 
O 

n 
n 
n 
n 
n 
o 
o 


4 
n 
n 
n 
o 
n 
n 
n 
n 


i 
n 
n 

n 
o 


4 
4 


2 


2 


4 

n 




o 
n 
n 
n 




n 
n 
n 




o 
o 


n 

2 


Minn.. 


n 


n 


n 


n 


n 


o 


n 


n 



The following- table shows the legal requirements in the io 
states as to professional training in approved schools (s), and 
as to experience in association with a professional practi- 
tioner (e), and as to both (s & e). The symbols have the same 
significance as in the preceding table. 



STATE 


LAW 


MEDI- 
CINE 


DENT- 
ISTRY 


PHAR- 
MACY 


VETER- 
INARY 
MEDI- 
CINE 


NURS- 
ING 


CERTI- 
FIED 
PUBLIC 

AC- 
COUNT- 
ING 


OPTOM- 
ETRY 


N. Y... 

Ill 

la 

Ohio . . . 
Penn . . . 
Mo 

Mass . . . 
Cal 

Mich . . . 
Minn . . . 


3s or e 

3s or e 

3s or e 

3s or e 

3s or e 

n 

n 

n 

3s or e 

3s or e 


4S 
4S 
4S 
4S 
4s 
4S 
n 
4S 
4S 
4S 


3S 
3S 
3S 
3S 

3S 
3S 
n 

3S 
3S 
3S 


2S & e 

4e 
4e 
4e 
2S & 4e 
3e 
n 
5e 
4e 
4e 


3S 

n 

3S 
n 

3S 
n 
n 

2S 

3S 
3S 


2S 
2S 

n 


3e 
n 


2S or 3e 


3S 


3e 
n 


2S 
2S 






n 

n 

n 

3e 




3S 

2S 

3S 


n 
2e 
n 



Generally the states hold examinations as the final test for 
admission to the professions, although in a few instances the 
diplomas of institutions admit. In New York, in every case, in 
addition to the required preliminary and professional training, 
we hold state examinations, supervised by the Education De- 
partment but prepared and rated by professional boards of ex- 
aminers. These professional examiners are appointed by the 
Board of Regents, except the law examiners who are appointed 
by the Court of Appeals. Of course, it must be remembered 



40 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

that two or three universities or professional schools require 
high school diplomas or even college degrees for admission to 
professional courses when the law of their states is silent about 
the matter. By law the Board of Regents may admit medical 
practitioners from other states to practise in this state when the 
requirements for admission to medical practice in the other 
state are equivalent to our own. Under this we have been able 
to enter into reciprocal relations with only Ohio and Michigan, 
of the 10 states with which we are comparing. In fairness it ought 
to be said that we have such relations with Vermont, New 
Jersey, Delaware, Wisconsin and Utah. Lawyers from other 
states are, under the rules of the Court of Appeals, admitted in 
certain cases to practise in this state, without examination, upon ap- 
plication to the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. 

There is no way by which a person can secure admission to 
any one of the professions in this state, except by complying 
with the legal requirements just set forth. And no one will 
venture to say that any other state has led the way to pro- 
fessional reform and character so strongly as New York. But, 
on the other hand, our professions are overcrowded, and even 
something more than schools and examinations is necessary to 
keep them as clean as they are capable. 

It is hardly asserted in any quarter that New York is not 
doing as much in the way of educational extension as any other 
state, and much more than most. We are not only subsidizing 
and augmenting public libraries with liberal state appropria- 
tions, but we are enlarging their practical uses in most stimu- 
lating ways ; and we are giving practical aid to every pro- 
fessional interest and every self-culturing activity with a free 
hand and in rational ways. I should like to express confidence 
that as large a percentage of our people make ready use of the 
opportunities so afforded as in some other states, but doubt if 
it would be justified. That is only another way of saying that 
because the social conditions were more settled and fixed before 
so much extension work was undertaken, and because we have 
to bear the heaviest burden of foreign immigration, the task of se- 
curing the same response is heavier here than in any other state. It 
also means that we are bound to do more in this way than is any 
other state. It seems to me that we are trying to do it. 

No one would venture to deny that we have as great and effi- 
cient universities, colleges and professional schools as any of 
the states with which we are comparing, but it is doubted, as 
already suggested, whether the influences of the advanced 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 4 1 

schools permeate and quicken the lower schools and the in- 
tellectual life of the state as much as in the other nine states, 
with not more than one or two exceptions. We are between 
two very strong and very dissimilar college influences. The 
old time colleges in New England exerted very decisive 
influences upon the many and strong Massachusetts academies, 
and did not cease doing so upon the public high schools when 
they came. The state universities in the states west of us are 
parts of the same system as the high schools themselves. If the 
academies grew out of the colleges, the state universities grew 
out of the high schools. Moreover, our high schools, which 
have often supplanted the old time academies, and have grown 
up in innumerable places where there were no academies, have 
grown up or are growing up, it must be admitted, in too many 
cases without the vital college or university connections which 
they need. 

Except in two or three cases, and then in a roundabout way, 
the state gives no state aid to her colleges and universities. 
And it must be said that our New York universities and col- 
leges, with a few notable exceptions and in spite of the best 
intentions and of some very definite efforts, have a terribly hard 
time about doing things to connect with and quicken the lower 
schools. Even when we endeavor to get the college men to 
come and help us in this annual conference, many of them have 
" married a wife," or must " go and try oxen," or engage in 
some other worldly pursuit. Possibly there is some connection 
between the two facts just noted. Of course it is not because 
of any want of general interest in education, and of course these 
men are tied up with prior engagements and heavily burdened 
with the regular routine. Certainly their first obligation is to the 
upbuilding of the great institutions for which they are respon- 
sible. But there is a very direct obligation to all the schools. 
In any virile educational system the schools of differing grades 
are interdependent. The lower schools are no more dependent 
than the upper schools. And it may be suspected that the way 
to promote the greatness as well as the usefulness of a univer- 
sity, is to quicken and enrich the schools below it. 

There is one all-important lesson in education which we in 
New York have not yet learned as we ought, and that is that 
the prosperity of each university promotes the good of all 
universities, and that the energy and efficiency of each grade of 
educational work is very dependent upon the energy and effi- 
ciency of the other grades. The Massachusetts people had a 



42 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

part of that forced upon them whether they would or not. The 
mixing and going qualities of the West made it easy for her people 
to learn it. Michigan knows it much better than Massachusetts, 
and Massachusetts somewhat better than we. New York must 
learn it, and when New York learns it the college men of New 
York will have learned it first. 

We have all the colleges, universities, and professional 
schools that even our great population of nine millions of people 
needs. We have got in the way of making exactions, not only 
upon students who want to enter the universities, but also upon 
those who want to begin professional study, as well as upon 
those who have completed professional courses and who apply 
for admission to the professions. We have a very complete 
scheme covering this whole matter, established in law and in prac- 
tice. But it must be said that we have colleges, universities, 
and professional schools that connive with students to avoid the 
requirements. We are admitting far more candidates to the 
learned professions than is good for the students, the profes- 
sions, or the people of the state. We do not need to advance 
requirements so much — although I suspect that the Court of 
Appeals might well give fresh consideration to the requirements 
for admission, and the details of the examinations for admission 
to the bar — as we need to see that we get what we assume 
to require. 

My cursory examination of the large and all-important in- 
quiry leads me to the conclusion that we have a most compre- 
hensive educational system, very well knit together and grow- 
ing in solidarity. Its most noticeable defect is the lack of 
the college influence in the affairs of the middle and lower 
schools. That is more apparent in the body of the state than 
in New York city. It is due not to the lack of universities and 
colleges, but to the fact that those we have are not related to 
the state or to each other, and are without vital connection with 
the state system of education. We have not yet broken much 
from the old order so far as the colleges are concerned, and we 
have not yet entered upon the new order in any appreciable 
degree or in any adequate or rational way. There are boys and 
girls in this state who want to go to college and are reasonably 
prepared to go, who can not go because of the expense. The 
higher institutions have not got down to the heart of the lower 
ones. It is a hard problem. It will be remedied because it is 
right in the pathway of the universal trend in American educa- 
tion. The remedy will not come from fitful and piecemeal state 



EDUCATIONAL STANDING OF NEW YORK STATE 43 

aid to an institution here and there. Whether it will come from 
a scheme of general state aid to all of the higher institutions 
upon some equitable basis which will bind all together and bind 
all to the entire system of education as contemplated in the 
original thought of the University of the State of New York, or 
through free municipal colleges, or through a real state univer- 
sity with campus, and buildings, and faculties which will pro- 
vide instruction in any study, free to all prepared to take it, is 
a large and pressing matter which ought to be addressing itself 
very seriously to the educational opinion of the state. 

As suggested at the beginning, this very offhand comparison 
of state educational systems has not aimed at mathematical ex- 
actness. The purpose was not to commend one state, or convict 
another. If such had been the aim and purpose, there would 
have been no result, or an unjust result, because it is practically 
impossible to compare the spirit and outlook of the states; 
because there is an absence of uniform statistics, and because 
every one of the states strives for the most and the best in 
education, and is entirely capable of acting up to its ideas and 
accomplishing what it undertakes. What is more serious than 
the absence of data for comparison is the notable absence of 
information necessary to the rational upbuilding of a reliable 
and uniformly efficient system of education. From this charge 
New York is not exempt. We are without the definite knowl- 
edge of the children of the state which is vital to our planning, 
and which must be available to the people of the state before we 
can expect our plans to have the required public support. The 
machinery for securing a part of this, which we have attempted 
through the Act of 1908 providing for an always up-to-date en- 
rollment of all the children of the state between 4 and 18 
years, is just being set in operation. It is anticipated that this 
will not only give us ground for the more complete execution 
of attendance laws, but also that it will support us in other 
ways. There is danger that it will not be very well done, but 
it is that or nothing, and it may lead to something better. It is the 
one step at a time and the step which one is able to take, that makes 
the only possible headway. And we not only need more exact 
statistics, but we need a more expert and and scientific inter- 
pretation of statistics. All this is admittedly true in New York; 
but it is clearly within the fact to say that no other state has 
approached us in gathering information about children or in 
collating and interpreting data covering the conditions and 
the doinsrs in all grades °^ scno °l s - 



44 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

It ought to be said that there can be no comparison with 
other state systems of education without seeing how much 
more concentrated our system of administration is than any 
other. Ours is " the New York system." It is the product of 
the very uniform thinking and the very consistent legislation 
of the state for more than a century. There is no other state 
educational organization to be compared with ours in the 
number of its officers and employees or in the centralization of 
authority to accomplish ends. In no other way can the state 
deal efficiently with its always enlarging stream of immigration 
and with its always more complex social and economic situa- 
tions. In no other way can it measurably provide training 
suited to the circumstances of every one and assure to every 
child what belongs to him. It is the only measurably efficient 
method for advancing, or even for maintaining, the intellectual, 
industrial, and humanitarian plane of the Empire State. 
Because it was entered upon early, it is the more readily accepted 
now. We need have no misgivings. Of course, organization is 
only a means to an end, but in this case it is a vital means to 
an imperative end. Of course, organization is capable of both 
good and evil. We can not remind ourselves too often that this 
organization is required to work, without effrontery or offense, 
with all those who would enlarge educational opportunity and 
increase the efficiency of the schools. But, quite as much, it must 
work rationally and firmly against ignorance, inexperience, in- 
difference, and all selfishness. It must recognize and respond 
to the public educational needs. It must initiate and aid popu- 
lar sentiment. Certainly it must encourage local initiative and 
give absolute home rule to all who are really trying to make 
better schools, within the limitations which have been made 
general by the well settled opinion and the law of the state. 
But upon this basis it need not fear, and it may derive satisfac- 
tion from the fact that the invariable trend in other states which 
have difficulties akin to ours, is in the direction of the essential 
features of our system. 

But let this paper have this definite conclusion : New York 
has reason enough for feeling very well over the peace and 
promise of her educational situation. But that is not all. She 
has educational needs. She needs better supervision of the 
country schools; she needs more complete vital statistics and 
more informing school statistics; and she needs that the work 
and the influence of the colleges and universities shall bear 
much more strongly upon the organization and the work of 
the middle and the lower schools. 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 

Men of genius and courage are discovering and applying new 
forms of " energy " and power in the physical world. Upon the 
earth, and through the air, and upon the waters and beneath them, 
they are driving physical bodies with new shapes, in new ways, and 
in ever increasing celerity and force. Railroads are making " runs " 
that have never before been equaled. Motor cars are making some 
people crazy. An ocean liner comes in every week with a new 
" world record." Men are flying many miles and whither they will 
through the air, with machines that are heavier than air. American 
explorers have just accomplished the heroic task of centuries and 
gained the north pole, while gallant officers and men of the English 
navy have come within a hundred miles of the south polar axis of 
the earth. New " world records " no longer surprise us, but we ask 
quickly about the motive power and want to know exactly how the 
thing was brought about. 

The motive and the power have quite as much to do with accom- 
plishment in the intellectual as in the physical world. The situation, 
the outlook, the reason, the inspiration, the purpose, the organized 
effort, the applications, the instrumentalities, and the processes, all 
have to do with the diffusion of common knowledge and with the 
gaining of new learning. Let us, with imperative brevity, look back 
over world history and try to see what has been the motive power 
of all educational progress, and then let us interpret as best we can 
the motives that are impelling education in America, and try to 
realize what the schools ought to do to meet the ideals of the people 
who have established and who sustain them. 

We look in vain for educational motive or progress anywhere in 
the world before the Christian era, and there has been practically 
none among the Oriental nations up to the present time, with the 
one exception of Japan. Of course, some would not agree with 
me. The disagreement would be more a matter of terms than of 
fact. Certainly a few scholars grew up among the ancients. Cer- 
tainly a few of the arts were highly cultivated by a small number 
of persons. Certainly monarchs used men like beasts of burden to 
construct a few great works. But this was because they controlled 
millions upon millions of human beings, and not quite all of them 

Address before the Kansas State Teachers Association, Topeka, Kansas, 
November 4, 1909. 

[45] 



46 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

could be kept from doing something, by the sodden ignorance and 
inertness of the great mass. Of course, these great peoples have 
not altogether escaped the contacts of modernism. It has blown 
some fresh breezes into their wrinkled faces. Their commercial 
nerves have been somewhat quickened, and their rulers and leaders 
have seen enough of the armies and navies and missionaries and 
consuls of civilization to be compelled to adjust themselves a little 
to the wonderful development of mediaeval and modern times in 
Europe and America. No people not absolutely savage — and prob- 
ably the savage peoples should not be excepted — have failed to give 
at least some rough tutoring to their children, and ordinarily they 
have developed some manner of schools. It is far from the pur- 
pose to ignore or belittle this tutoring, or the manner of schools 
which have obtained among the Asiatic peoples. But it is idle to 
look for modern educational motive among a people numbering 
hundreds of millions who for the most part live in damp and dis- 
mal houses ; who believe that disease is a conflict within the man 
between the spirits of light and the spirits of darkness ; two thirds 
of whose children never grow up, and whose every habit is fixed 
by superstitious fear. Any real scholarship of such a people is 
accidental or exotic, and their schools are as heavy and inert as 
themselves. 

The Japanese are so unlike other Asiatic peoples that some ex- 
perts insist that they are not, like all of their original neighbors, of 
the Mongolian race. However that may be, something that was 
apparently inherent led them to move out of themselves and lay 
hold of the philosophy and the methods of modern education. Forty 
years ago their government made formal application to the govern- 
ment of the United States to send men of standing to Japan to 
organize a system of schools upon a basis as much like that of the 
United States as was consistent with the conditions. The results 
have been so surprising, so exceedingly creditable to such a people, 
that they are often credited with more than is strictly true. But 
much, very much, is true. They have established religious free- 
dom. Of course but one religion prevails, and that is not Christian- 
ity. Their schools are of all grades, open to all, and, true to the 
national characteristics, are highly efficient. As in all countries 
where hereditary monarchs rule and classes prevail, limited educa- 
tion is practically universal, and liberal education is much circum- 
scribed. In other words, all of the younger children are in efficient 
elementary schools, and the opportunities for those who are favored 
by birth or are enough stronger than their fellows to seize what 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 47 

may be reached with difficulty, are almost unlimited. The net re- 
sult is national educational progress which for celerity of movement 
stands alone in history. What the real impelling cause has been 
will probably never be definitely known. 

With this exception, the Asiatic nations have exhibited no inher- 
ent force which has lifted them up into the white light of civiliza- 
tion. None of them, China, Korea, Egypt or India, has ever, except 
in a most limited way, come under the influences of Christianity, 
and it is difficult to understand how any who' read history can fail 
to see that Christianity has been, from first to last, the vital moving 
cause of educational progress. 

It broke its way over Europe only by force and through agony. 
But the force was of the heart; it was inherent in the men and 
women of the great Aryan family, and the agony was the birth 
pains of a new order of things. The fateful opposition of the kings 
nerved and the rich blood of the martyrs nourished it. It stirred 
faith, and faith never considers the bulwarks of ignorance or self- 
interest. It set men and women and in time it set the nations in 
motion. Explorations and discoveries, of intense interest to all 
capable of being interested, followed one another, and revolutions 
of world-wide moral and intellectual significance quickly succeeded 
each other. The Crusades, the discovery of America, new inven- 
tions for ascertaining and transmitting knowledge, the profound 
power of the truth, and the triumphs of the armies which, whatever 
their reasoning, fought for the freedom of the truth, all sprung 
from the same original cause — the quickening and the independ- 
ence of the souls of men. 

Of course these great acts were shaded by the attributes of the 
actors. The physical situations and the intellectual opportunities 
and possibilities of the nations gave different colorings to what they 
did. But they were all of kindred origin, and they brought the 
peoples of Europe into some sort of relations in a movement which 
was to run through the centuries and be of great moment to the 
world. They even created a wholly new nation in Britain. And 
what is of vastly more importance, they recast the political as well 
as the religious thinking of Europe, and brought monarchs and 
monarchies to their terms, or hurried them on to their dooms. Even 
kings espoused the new order of things, or from obvious necessity 
pretended that they did, and the masses began to think of the in- 
herent rights of men and women, and to find both expression for 
their thinking and a guide to better thinking in representative as- 
semblies. Out of it all came constitutionalism, the opportunity of 



48 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

a people to make their laws, and the obligations of all, no matter 
how weak and no matter how great, even of kings and nobles, to 
abide by them. 

And out of this has emerged the varying measures and the dif- 
fering forms of constitutionalism. In one country the class dis- 
tinctions are sharp and always observed, the forms of social life 
and political procedure are rigid, and the monarch or a ruling class 
gives distinct shadings to all the doings of the nation, until some 
incident arises to stir resistance which has to be respected. In an- 
other there has developed pure democracy, where every one stands, 
and knows that he stands, equal before the law; and where all of 
the plain people hold, and know that they hold, the power which 
settles the procedure of the nation. Year by year they become 
more accustomed to it, and more determined to exercise it without 
fear of any other power. Each of these, of course, shows educa- 
tional motive, and accordingly has educational policies that are 
peculiar to itself. Between these come governments with all sorts 
of social and political organizations ; public opinion expressed with 
differing degrees of freedom and in all manner of forms, and edu- 
cational motive in every stage of evolution operating according to 
its lights and its possibilities. 

One can not hope to gain any real appreciation of American 
opportunity if, on the one hand, he imagines that America is the 
only land where opportunity has set her foot; or if, on the other 
hand, he fails to see that the open chance for every one is a freer 
chance in America than in any other land for those not favored 
by birth and fortune. One can hardly plan intelligently for the 
future of American education unless he has some conception of 
the history, and the moving causes in the history, of other countries. 
One must recognize the strong points and ascertain the weak points 
in other school systems, and he must have abundant care lest he 
exaggerate the strong points and the weak points unduly, or at- 
tribute them to other than the real causes. He must surely bear 
in mind that names may mislead him ; that a nation with a repub- 
lican form of government may for other reasons be really more 
arbitrary and autocratic, may offer less of political power and in- 
dividual opportunity to the multitude, than another with a mon- 
archal form of government. And of course he must remember 
that an old nation with inherited laws, traditions, usages, and in- 
stitutions, and particularly with upper and lower classes, is almost 
barred from initiating movements, and often must be blind to the 
desirability of movements, which may be quite obvious and easy 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 



49 



in a new country. And there is not a country in Europe that is 
not old according to our standards, nor one in which there is not 
a far more distinct cleavage between classes than is possible under 
the laws and the political philosophy of the United States. 

The two great peninsulas of southern Europe are occupied by 
nations of Roman origin. They derived their laws from the great 
law-giving nation of the ancients. Their people are polite and 
affable. They have imagination and have given much of the fine 
arts to the world. They possess great churches and art galleries. 
They have a long history. They have exercised strong military 
power. One of them has absolutely suppressed more than one 
civilization as advanced as its own, and would probably have ruled 
the world but for the bravery of the Dutchmen in the Netherlands. 
With the broadest opportunities and with many of the finest at- 
tributes, she has become a skeleton among nations and a warning 
to the world. Military men tell us that the infantry of each of 
these nations is among the most efficient in the world. Each is a 
constitutional monarchy with the emphasis upon the monarchy. 
In the body of neither of these peoples is the educational initiative 
strong. Each has schools, but such schools only as the government 
thinks well to give to or even to impose upon the people. Their 
schools lack the vital forces which the people themselves must put 
into them to make them virile. Both nations recognize and sustain 
the Christian religion. In one of them one denomination of Chris- 
tians is practically exclusive of all others ; in the other the same 
denomination is dominant, but toleration has in the last generation 
made fine advances. In the first case there is not only a lack of 
educational initiative, but a lack of advanced schools to quicken 
the lower ones. There is little in the way of requiring attendance 
upon schools. By a census taken in 1900 it was shown that 630 
in every 1000 people could neither read nor write. The number has 
lessened but slowly during all the throbbing world activities of the 
last generation. In the other case, where toleration has made some 
progress, there are more free elementary schools and some advanced 
schools ; attendance upon primary schools is required, but only up 
to the ninth year of age, and the percentage of illiteracy is about 
35, having been reduced by about half in the last generation. Ap- 
parently the advance of religious toleration and the reduction of 
illiteracy have been coincident and related. But neither country 
has held its rightful place in the onward march of the world. 

The northern peninsula of Europe provides a home for two 
nations which are constitutional monarchies, with the greater em- 



50 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

phasis upon the constitutional. Motive has its opportunity and 
grows richer and stronger through accomplishment. Each sustains 
the Christian religion, and in each one denomination prevails, but 
there is no lack of toleration. Nor is there lack of schools of any 
grade, and there is practically no one who is unable to read and 
write. Attendance is compulsory up to the fourteenth year. 
Nothing, not even the sickness or poverty of parents, is allowed to 
excuse absence. The hand industries are held in esteem and recog- 
nized in the schools, and this seems to be the basis of a highly 
developed culture that is respected by all the enlightened nations 
of the world. 

About the same things may be said of Denmark, Netherlands, 
and Switzerland : two of these are very free monarchies, and the 
other a very free republic. These names certainly signify some 
differences in the national traditions and outlooks, but not so much 
as one who has not seen them might think. Each has large religious 
and political freedom, excellent schools of all grades, required at- 
tendance, and much industry; and in each illiteracy is practically 
negligible. 

Extending across the body of Europe are three of the very great 
nations of the world. Russia has more than the population and 
five times the area of both the others. It is an arbitrary monarchy. 
There has been considerable unrest and some movements in the 
direction of a more liberal political system, but nothing amounting 
to a substantial and successful revolution. The people are stalwart 
enough in body and strong enough in mind. They have likable 
traits. But in some way the nation fails to get on. It has a great 
army and a great navy which get thrashed by smaller ones. The 
royal family has a very large measure of the world's respect and 
shows many benevolent intentions, but is at all times in apparent 
peril of its life. The nation upholds a church as arbitrarily as the 
throne upholds itself. Men and women are kept in that church by 
compulsion, and it pursues a philosophy of religion which seems to 
contain the seeds of its own ultimate destruction. Accordingly, 
we would expect to find, as we do find, that the education of the 
nobility is well provided for, but that there is no breaking out of 
an intolerable situation by the peasant class. There is little educa- 
tional initiative among the commoners, and little in the way of a 
comprehensive system of schools. There are palaces and univer- 
sities, but one looks in vain for exact information concerning any 
general system of elementary schools. 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 



51 



Next, on the east, is the now consolidated German Empire, with 
the freest, the most philosophical, the most exactly efficient and 
the most universally accepted educational system of any of the 
great powers of Europe. It has a school for every purpose; it 
exacts the attendance of every child, and it pays attention to every 
detail. Illiteracy is reduced to the vanishing point. Germany holds 
religion in esteem. The emperor enjoins it and with all sincerity, 
but religious toleration is almost complete. That emperor is a real 
emperor : he rules. He thinks he gets his title and his right to rule 
from God direct; but often something happens to remind him that 
the people have something to say about it and are not afraid to 
say it, and before they force a break he adjusts himself to the situa- 
tion with celerity and grace which do him infinite credit. The 
emperor and the people alike have educational motive, and upon 
that subject at least they get on admirably together. Together they 
have developed a system of education which has some elements 
that America may envy. But taken all in all, it would not suffice 
for us because in some way it seems to put scientific attainment 
above balanced and efficient character, and it breaks the progressive 
educational continuity which is the main hope of the people who 
are not specially favored by fortune. 

France is a republic grown out of the severest military monarchy 
of modern history. The thinking of the people could not be recast 
in a day. They are accustomed to much governance, to having 
their religion impressed upon them, and to thinking in fixed and 
rather rigid grooves. They are an exceedingly affable people, are 
proficient in all the ordinary arts, are studious of the sciences, and 
have developed a certain culture which is unexcelled. They in- 
herited the Roman law as they did the Roman blood, and they have 
improved upon both. They have the advantages and the disadvan- 
tages of a long and strenuous history; of a magnificent situation 
which is threatened by ambitious and military power of the first 
rank, and of very considerable liberalization, both religious and 
political, in recent years. Yet they do have a republican form of 
government. It has helped the liberalization quite as much as it 
has sprung from it. It has certainly given opportunity to the edu- 
cational initiative which is quite prevalent among the people. All 
this is reflected in the schools. They are given to the arts and 
sciences, they extend to all grades and to all the people, but they 
are exceedingly rigid in their lines and they lack the flexibility 
which adapts them to all situations. They are lacking in local 
color. Everything, even the making as well as the execution of 



$2 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

policies, is clone in a central office. The freedom of excellent 
universities does not project much freedom into the teaching of the 
lower schools, and the break in continuity is more pronounced 
there than in Germany. The rate of illiteracy is about one in six- 
teen, which is not unsatisfactory and is very significant. Doubtless 
France affords the best illustration of the efficient results of a sys- 
tem of schools imposed by a government, as against one developed 
by a great people. 

Britain is a new nation, as the nations of Europe go. It was 
compounded out of other peoples and came from great migrations 
a thousand years ago. It started after the fashions of other peoples 
of the time. But the migrators were virile men, and the com- 
pounding produced yet more virile ones. Of course, the kingship 
started very large, but those forceful men said some things and 
did some things which shrunk it to a size and put it in a place 
which made it possible to be endured. The personal and property 
rights of man were established, and constitutions and laws grew. 
But a church was used to bolster up the state, and the state used 
its arms to enforce the religious and philosophical contentions of 
the church. We know that revolutions, and battles, and burnings, 
and the beheading of a king resulted, but do we see that all this 
only mitigated and did not cure a situation? In the very van of 
world progress, Britain could not then develop, nor has she yet 
developed, the political institutions which would give the same 
measure of opportunity as of security to all her people. Her 
schools have been limited by the special interests of her church. 
She has never had a universal system of free schools. Through 
the last generation numbers of her people have struck strenuous 
blows and met with the stoutest resistance in trying to effect it. 
No one can foretell the result. There is a clear break in her school 
system which is very sure to balk any purpose that the children 
of her common people may have to gain a liberal education ; and. 
what seems worse to us, there is a very apparent disposition on 
the part of the aristocracy to resist any change in order to prevent 
their gaining it ; and there is far too general assent on the part of 
the masses that things may go on as they are. There is little posi- 
tive illiteracy, but the great serving class is very content with the 
merest rudiments of knowledge. Indeed, this class is so self- 
contained and withal so happy in serving, that we hear questions 
on this side of the sea as to whether their serenity ought to be dis- 
turbed. Letting that go, it is clear enough that the classes and the 
interdependence of church and state deaden educational motive 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION e-? 

and limit educational advance among the great people who have 
perhaps gone further than any other to throw the security of the 
law about the persons and the property of men and women. 

And we may get a still more graphic illustration of our thought 
from within Britain herself, if we will recall the earlier and larger 
religious independence of Scotland, and that coincidently with it 
there emerged such a comprehensive and universal system of 
schools as England has never known. 

Now, how can we observe these marked differences in intellec- 
tual aptitude and resulting systems of schools between nations of 
differing physical origins and situations, and between peoples of 
the same great family and inhabiting the same latitudes, but of 
differing religious and political histories, without appreciating that 
even the inherent motive which would break down barriers and cre- 
ate opportunities is much helped or hindered by the character of 
political and religious institutions and by the relations which exist 
between them? How can we see succeeding revolutions giving 
larger liberty to masses of men in sufficient numbers to enable 
them to maintain their positions, and behold them steadily advanc- 
ing to higher intellectual planes, and not have confidence in the 
mass of men and women? 

Political and religious history go far to influence educational out- 
look and purpose, as well as to explain educational situations. And 
it disparages nothing of what the new world owes to the old, to 
say that in this all-important matter the new world has gone far 
beyond anything that the old world ever taught her. 

The early American settlers did not do that accidentally or 
blunderingly; they did not do it by clear thinking; they did not 
have a plan ; nor did they do it immediately. A few English Pil- 
grims, a few Scotch Dissenters, a few French Huguenots, a few 
Dutch Walloons, and a few other glorious extremists of their day 
came to America for religious freedom, but for ample reasons they 
did nothing further about schools for long years in the new world, 
than they and their fathers had been accustomed to do in the old 
world. And that was little indeed. Nor did the greater throng 
that came in the ensuing century and a half of American settle- 
ment go much further. So long as the political and military gov- 
ernance of the old world continued in the new, there was no appre- 
ciable enlargement of educational motive. There was no school 
system worth the name in either the eastern, the middle, or the 
southern colonies, till old world control was thrown off and those 
colonies became independent states. For fifty years after the settle- 



54 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

ment there were no schools at Plymouth, and none at Massachu- 
setts Bay save a denominational college and a tributary fitting 
school. England successfully resisted in New York the disposi- 
tion to maintain free schools which the Dutch had acquired in the 
Netherland Republic. Not until the Dutch and the English had 
fought together for independence did they learn to work together 
for education. The organization of a system of common schools 
followed close upon the organization of a free state. Educational 
purpose has grown out of the plan of government that our fathers 
had the great wisdom and the sublime courage to enshrine in our 
fundamental laws in the very midst of battles, and more rapidly 
and efficiently as soon as the glowing embers of the successful 
Revolution began to cool down. It grew slowly and fitfully at first ; 
but it has become almost a consuming passion now. 

Racial distinctions may have something to do with it; mountains 
and rivers and shores and climate may have some connection with 
it ; experiences may have borne upon it ; but it is the common feel- 
ing of a people towards a Supreme Being, and the free right and 
responsibility of doing for themselves, that give mental and moral 
direction to the physical energies of human life. The new nation 
compounded in this country out of the more restless and choice 
spirits of the world, was the first to get a good understanding of 
that fact ; and with the favoring advantages of a stimulating climate 
and a free field, they have made the most of the understanding 
they have gained. 

It proves two things which we are bound to keep in our memo- 
ries : first, it proves affirmatively, what the history of Europe shows 
negatively, that the innate forces of human nature are helped or 
hindered by the relations which political and religious institutions 
bear to each other; and, second, not only that churches multiply 
and thrive more without than through manipulation by the politics 
of the state, but also that the state flourishes when freed from the 
exigencies and limitations which are inherent in a church based not 
exclusively upon religious feeling, but in some measure, and neces- 
sarily, upon one or another human philosophy of religion, or upon 
forms held sacred because of the thinking and the feeling, for a 
long time, of good men and women. 

Of course we all understand this in a way, but it is well to put 
it in the best form we can and express it in the throng now and 
then. It enables us to see that a new continent was discovered at 
the time when new room was required for a moral and intellectual 
advance ; it sharpens appreciation of the free home in which we 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 



55 



live ; it strengthens the bonds of both political concord and religious 
unity ; and it gives edge to the ambitions which can make the most 
of this land of opportunity. 

Now if we have gathered a few rays of new light upon the great 
fact that educational motive has had its best opportunity in Amer- 
ica, let us ask what has become the real point of its aim and what 
has been the method and the measure of its progress. 

It has gone to the very root of the matter. It has not been con- 
tent with an isolated result, no matter how meritorious that result 
might be. It has not searched merely for scientific discovery; it 
has not been satisfied with idle culture; it has not sought mere 
riches ; it has not stood transfixed before even the masterpieces of 
art; it has not permitted itself to be used by royal and ambitious 
leaders to add land to the territory or power to the military strength 
of an empire. It has tolerated no exclusiveness ; it has not been 
for the rich as against the poor, nor for the poor as against those 
who have grown rich without parting company with integrity. It 
has had self-confidence and been able to do what it undertook. It 
has been serious without solemnity. It has had humor and been 
able to smile. It has felt consideration and it has made for coop- 
eration. It has stood for nothing short of the even chance for 
every one; and for nothing less than helping all men and women 
to make the most of themselves. 

That is the mission of the American schools, and nothing less 
humane, generous and ambitious than that must be allowed to give 
trend and glow and endurance to the work of American teachers. 

Every child must have his American birthright — an elementary 
education. It must be so, no matter how unfortunate his birth 
may have been. If his parents can not or do not assure it, the 
state must. It must do so in future much more completely than is 
now done. 

Every one must be aided to go forward upon every manner of 
educational highway just as far as he will. And the schools must 
permit him to select what he will, and help him to move into what 
he thinks he likes best. If it is a profession, good; if it is trade, 
good ; if it is labor of the hand, just as good. There must be no 
bias nor discrimination about employments. Every aim of the 
state and every interest of the child demand that the schools stand 
fair. The child must decide for himself, as soon as may be; and 
the schools must stir in him some manner of ambition, and aid him 
to realize his particular ambition, as best they can. 



56 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

It can not be done without hard work, without intellectual hard 
knocks. The old-time coarse brutality that was in the schools has 
gone. There is some reason to fear that we have gone to the other 
extreme. One who grows up without rebuffs, grows up without 
force. Work, and more work, and difficulties and setbacks, and 
still more work, are vital to the balance and strength of men and 
women. The passing sentiment in a community or a club which 
puts unsubstantial details upon the schools is to be defied. The 
shortsighted sentiment which merely coddles children in a school 
is to be discredited. Equal justice under whatever circumstances, 
and untiring work of whatever kind, are the watchwords of the 
American schools. 

Of course there must be culture in the schools. But what is 
culture? Pictures and music may evidence it; they may draw it 
out and give it expression; but they do not create it. Culture is 
not of the eye ; it is not a bloom upon the skin. . It is of the heart ; 
it is something in the feelings; it is a growth of the soul. It is 
the result of work and experience reacting upon life. It comes 
less from looking and talking than from doing. It is the com- 
panion of skill, and skill is the trained child of a master who is 
either a mental or a manual toiler. The schools are to work for it 
with all their might ; but they are not to go after it by putting the 
cart ahead of the horse; and they will never get it through mis- 
apprehension of what it is. 

The schools must surely uphold scholarship. They are rather 
naturally subject to conceits. Neither the university president nor 
the elementary teacher is altogether immune. This is well, for 
occasional attacks are not unhealthful. They are associated with 
our business. But truth is the object of the schools. The surest 
truth comes from the higher learning. It is a poor, weak system 
of schools which has no schools higher up. Perhaps that is what 
is the matter with some of the experts. It is a strong system of 
schools in which the ones below look to the ones above ; in which 
the ones above are quickening the ones below and are dependent 
upon them ; in which the live currents of real truth are always 
coursing up and down the whole structure from the turrets to the 
foundation stones. The North Central and Western States of our 
Union have had a freer opportunity than the Eastern States had 
to make this so, and they have done it more completely. Some of 
the Eastern States have some advantage over their western sisters ; 
but it ought to be said and appreciated that there is no system of 
schools in the world with height, and depth, and breadth, and co- 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 57 

ordination, and continuity, and diversification, and interdependence, 
and sustained by public moneys and open to all, like that which is 
unfolding in the great Western States that lie in the watershed of 
the Mississippi river and to the west of it. 

The schools are to keep strictly in the middle of the road of 
moral sense. They are to make no fanciful discriminations between 
morals and religion. Avoiding sectarian doctrine, they need not 
avoid the God who is the giver of all life. They may well follow 
the Father of their Country, and the common usages and the un- 
prejudiced thinking of their countrymen, about all that. They may 
at least do it until some one tells them they must stop; and then 
they may take time to find out from competent authority whether 
they must stop or not. But whether the Bible is read, and the 
hymn sung, and the simple prayer uttered or not, every process 
of the schools is to repel untruth and indirection, and promote 
habits of thinking and a manner of life which are exact. 

The schools must offer incentives and stir enthusiasms. Ambi- 
tions must be awakened and pointed to their goal. When (boys and 
girls are disposed to do what is decent, let us try to have them do 
what they want to do, lest the spark be quenched and they lose the 
purpose to do anything at all. If one is long on sport and a little 
short on work, let us give in somewhat to his love of sport in the 
hope that he will begin to like companionship with us and recipro- 
cate by giving in to the work which we must require him to do. 
It is not always well to hold a slow and poky, studious and cooi- 
fortable boy up as a model to a live and trying one. It is better 
to bump them together so that their differing virtues and draw- 
backs will be somewhat transfused. The unexpected often happens 
in this country, and the teacher may well be cautious lest the time 
come when the urchin who distracted him because he could manage 
a horse better than he could manage a book, shall invite him to ride 
on the president's car on the railroad. It is better to see that it 
takes something of a boy to manage a horse, and use that fact to 
get him into the intricacies of the book, so that the time may come 
when he will bless his old teacher for it, and the teacher may be 
able to ride in that private car without any disturbing recollections. 

The great crime in the American schools is intellectual slovenli- 
ness. It may be due in part to the fact that we are doing so many 
new things in a great new country. It may grow out of the inexact 
training of teachers. It may have resulted in part from fantastic 
theories about the management of children which the experimental 
psychologists have been aggressively pushing upon us, without 



58 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

enough reason, for a generation. It may have some relation to the 
very wide open election of studies which the universities and col- 
leges have encouraged in the same generation, and which some are 
trying to push down into the secondary schools. From whatever 
cause it arises, the complaint is general and seems justified, that we 
do not train children to do definite things; that the completion of 
courses can not be reckoned in efficiency, and that our proceedings 
do not generate the intellectual resourcefulness and power which 
they ought. It is a serious charge. 

We are entitled to generosity for all we are attempting, and to 
consideration for all of our newness; but we must get results, or 
dare a fate. We shall not be excused for training teachers in vague 
and unsubstantial theories which ignore the economic value of child 
life and defy his right to be •trained just as rapidly as the schools 
can do it in the proficiency and the accomplishments which will 
enable him to do the most for himself. 

There is no imperative reason for doing exactly the same things 
or perhaps for exacting precisely the same standards in all schools ; 
but there is need enough that the courses in the schools shall be 
translatable into some definite grasp of the subject and into some 
real power to go out and do the real things of which they treat. 
There is every reason why young men and maidens shall be allowed 
to prepare themselves for the work of their choice, but there is no 
reason why the schools should leave to immature minds, as much 
as they do, the determination of what constitutes preparation for 
the work which they choose. It is well to conserve the resources 
of nature; but so it is to conserve the lives of children. It is well 
to be more exact and resultful in the use of materials and the 
processes of trade; but it will be even better to assert what we 
actually know in the planning of work, and to make sure that 
we teach what we undertake in the routine of the schools. 

But neither teaching to read, nor training to work, nor offering 
opportunity, nor enforcing the truth, nor all of that together, com- 
prises the sum of the burden that is upon the American schools. 
The major part is the imparting to the pupil the desire to know, 
and the power to do, and the purpose to find the truth for himself 
and act up to it. He must know what men and women have done 
in the world ; where they have succeeded and when they have 
failed, and why. He must know what manner of social life, what 
kind of business conduct, has succeeded, and what has failed, and 
why. He must know that work is a blessing, that participation in 
the opportunities which rational society creates is a privilege, that 



MOTIVE IN EDUCATION 59 

public service is a duty, and that government is a burden which 
all good citizens are bound to bear. In other words, his motives 
must be aroused, and brought into' conformity with the motives 
which are the groundwork of the schools. 

The state of New York has just held two monster celebrations 
in honor of the discovery of Lake Champlain and of the Hudson 
river, and of the application of steam to the commerce of the 
world. Champlain and Hudson considerately made their discov- 
eries in the same year, and Fulton made his steamboat go against 
wind and tide so very near the anniyersary year that the state 
could combine demonstrations with a minimum of time and a 
maximum of glare, of noise, and of joy. Surely it was a great 
time. The little Half Moon and the old Clermont were there to 
receive not only the acclaim of our people, but of all peoples ; not 
only the salutations of our navy, but of the leading battleships of 
all the navies of the world. There were meetings in every town ; 
oration and poetry seemed to be the easy expression of those days. 
Beacon fires lighted every hilltop, from the St Lawrence to the 
mouth of the Hudson. The old bloody ground of the Iroquois, 
the great warpath of the Revolution upon which national independ- 
ence was won, was all ablaze. All along the old road there were 
great military and civic pageants. British grenadiers strode in a 
stately way to the strains of the air which has long called out 
every energy of the Britons; and Scotch Highlanders in brilliant 
plaids were enough to make one know that the Campbells were 
really coming. The flags and the arms of all the nations brightened 
the scene. The tricolor of France, and the German, and the Rus- 
sian, and the Roman Eagles were all there. But the American 
Eagle was the greatest eagle of all. The regulars of our army 
and the bluejackets of our navy marched in happy competition 
with every manner of organization that a bright and complex 
civilization which loves organization, has had the ingenuity to 
devise. It was the proclamation of New York that novelists 
and New Englanders shall no longer be allowed to write 
her history for her. But perhaps better than all else, certainly no 
less significant than the expression of our own history, was the 
graphic portrayal of the intellectual contributions which America 
has inherited from all the nations of the world. As the great 
floats went by, each of the national societies told of the work of 
the great teachers, and writers, and workers, and painters, and 
poets, and discoverers, and inventors, and martyrs, and statesmen, 
and heroes, which the fatherlands of all of them had given to the 

I 



6o NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

country of their new home, and so had really made it the land 
of opportunity. There was the Dutchman at the right of the line, 
and close upon his heels the Englishman, and the Scotchman, and 
the Irishman, and the Frenchman, and the German, and the Swiss, 
and the Scandinavian, and the Italian, and the Jew, and the Jap, 
and all the rest who have had a share in the making of America. 
And all that has entered into the genius of America, enters into the 
making and the motive of the American schools. 



HATS off ! 

'Hats off! 

Along the street there comes 
A blare of bugles, a ruffle of drums, 

A flash of color beneath the sky : 
Hats off! 
The flag is passing by ! 

Blue and crimson and white it shines, 

Over the steel-tipped, ordered lines. 

Hats off! 

The colors before us fly; 

But more than the Hag is passing by." 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

It is being asserted with some persistence that in recent years 
there has been a letting down of moral plane among the people of 
the United States. It is being bruited about that the moral sense 
of our later years is less acute than in the earlier years in our 
country, and that the moral standards of America are less exact 
than those of other countries. 

Those who say this are quick to attribute the cause to the ab- 
sence of religious instruction in the common or tax-supported 
schools. The charge has been given new point since the state 
universities have grown so great. 

The men who make this charge are those who are specially inter- 
ested in church schools of elementary grade, and those who are in 
charge of, or are particularly concerned about the prosperity of, 
the denominational colleges. 

It is a serious charge, from a quarter which, of course, has our 
entire respect. If the moral sensibilities of our people are less 
pervasive and acute than those of other peoples are, or than those 
of our fathers were, our religious teachers would be derelict if they 
did not present and protest the fact. If they also think that this is 
because of the nonsectarian character of the common schools, they 
ought to say so. But 'before saying that, they ought to realize that 
they will be discredited in that public opinion of the country which 
is above every sect, if their belief in the decadence of morals is not 
justified. And they ought not to fail to see that if there is such 
moral depression as they think they see, and if it is due to the cause 
they assert it is, it proves nothing short of the breakdown of the 
political philosophy and institutions of the Republic. 

The thing goes to the very foundations of the splendid and costly 
temple in which the people of the United States live and which they 
have erected in the belief that it would give them not only shelter 
and security, but also opportunity to develop the purest and highest 
type of Christian civilization ever conceived by the heart and mind 
of man. There is the possibility that all of the people who have 
had part in the building of this house may have been in error; 
that the lives which have been lost and the sorrows which have 
been endured in the doing of it have been in vain ; but an educated 

Address before the Iowa State Teachers Association, Des Moines, Iowa, 
November 6, iooo. 

[61] 



62 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

man who must be assumed to know something of political and 
religious history, who may be expected to put a just valuation upon 
political equality and religious freedom, is bound to feel the respon- 
sibility, and the solemnity, and the vital necessity of such a charge, 
before making it. If a teacher, or a leader of religious teachers, 
is free to make it, leaders of lesser weight will be free to follow, 
and many of the plain people will be free to think it. Doubtless all 
this has been considered. 

We must either ignore this charge or examine it rather criti- 
cally. It does not comport with our regard for the good intentions 
and the piety of those who make it, to ignore it. It may be exam- 
ined without anger, and it ought to be discussed without giving 
offense. A government which makes for irreligion is a mistake. 
We make here no fine distinctions between religion and morals. 
No matter what incidental advantages there may be about such a 
government, they can not be sufficiently compensatory. But the 
founders of our government did not imagine that they were setting 
up such a government as that. They were religionists of the 
severest type. They had fled from other lands that they might be 
free from governments which governed in the name of religion 
but yet took away all religious freedom. The governments they 
had left behind them made them know that there must be a new 
plan before there could be more freedom. The experiences of a 
hundred and fifty years in this country gradually settled the plan 
which they believed would suffice. 

The men who framed the national and state constitutions of the 
United States saw, and the results enable us to see it even more 
clearly than they, that the vitality of a state depends upon moral 
freedom, and that moral freedom depends upon opportunity without 
interference by the state. But they saw also that the self-interests 
of men, the urgency of theorists, the ambitions of human organi- 
zation, assuming to move in the name of God, are menacing to 
the freedom of a state. Therefore, when they framed the first 
constitutions that had ever been reduced to written form for a 
people, they wrote it large and plain that religion should be encour- 
aged, that preferment in or exclusion from the state should depend 
upon no particular religious belief, that there should be complete 
separation between church and state, and that all the people should 
have equality of right and opportunity under the law. They thought 
they were laying foundations which could sustain all manner of civic 
institutions for enlarging the opportunities of men, and that they 
were opening the way for a larger and freer stream of the human 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 63 

feeling which is the sum and substance of moral character and 
religious life. 

Religion is inherent in men and women. Freedom of thought 
and of the expression oi it is a vital factor in religion. Where the 
attempt has been made to suppress it, or to control the form in 
which it should be expressed, there has been sharp resistance. 
Wherever the attempt has been imposed upon men of Caucasian 
blood it has failed. For this reason, all governments for or over 
educated people which have not had a large measure of democracy 
have failed. It was not so much because men wanted to govern 
as because faith would not be bound. Of course, there are mon- 
archial governments that have not failed. But there is no govern- 
ment that has not permitted an advance in educational opportunity 
and religious freedom, or that has not recognized the rights of 
men and felt the political power of the plain people, which is not 
breaking down. Our government has succeeded so strongly because 
it was the first to see all this. It was not only all provided for in 
the constitutions, but it was amply provided that nothing could come 
in to interfere with it. In the outworking of these provisions we 
have rapidly grown to be a mighty people ; but that is of no avail if 
we have grown to be an unmoral people. 

The founders of the Republic had reason enough to fear a 
state buttressed by the deep religious feeling of a church, and a 
church which could call to its aid the political and military power 
of a state. They knew full well that the worst blots upon the great 
page of human history were there by reason of things done falsely 
in the name of religion, but with the sanction of a church. Our 
Dutch forefathers had part in the world's first and greatest war 
for religious and political freedom in the Netherlands. Our English 
forefathers had been hunted out of Britain for refusing to let the 
combined state and church bind their thinking and fix their ways 
of worship. And the builders of this nation have come from every 
people under the sun for nothing but to escape the political and 
religious limitations of old systems, and to enter into the larger 
liberty of the land where the state may govern without cant, and 
religion go forward unhindered by any needs or tendencies of the 
state, and unhampered by the self-interest of any leaders of the 
state. 

We have not only inherited religious feeling, but we have inher- 
ited Christianity. We have not only inherited Christianity, but 
under the plan of government which our fathers set up, we have 
enlarged it. We are neither going back to Confucianism nor 



64 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

searching for a new religion. Christianity has always made for 
human progress above all the forces which have come into human 
life. It is not the only religion. It is not the only one permitted 
here. But it is overwhelmingly the religion of the United States. 
It has acted upon, and it has been acted upon by, the United States, 
to the enlargement of both. It is in our feeling and in our thinking. 
We set apart one day of the week in recognition of it. It is in 
almost every verse of our poetry. We proclaim it in our sorrow 
and in our thanksgiving. It is diffused in all our institutions. It 
is invoked on all public occasions. Democracy is the best and the 
greatest expression of the Golden Rule, and the Golden Rule is 
the gist and essence of kinship with God. This thing is the warp 
and woof of our laws. It is recognized in all of our great state 
papers. Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence, the Arti- 
cles of Confederation, the federal Constitution, the Constitutions 
of all the states, proclaim it. Washington avowed it in the 
Farewell Address, and Lincoln departed from his manuscript at 
Gettysburg to introduce the words " under God " into the prayer 
" that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, 
and that government of the people, by the people, and for the 
people, shall not perish from the earth." When the words " In God 
we trust " were removed from our coins, the protest of the people 
restored them. 

"Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just. 
And this be our motto : ' In God is our trust.' " 

In the constitutional convention of our little ward, the island 
of Cuba, the most violent discussion of the entire convention was 
provoked by the motion to strike out the provision concerning 
God and the freedom of religion, and the most overwhelming vote 
cast in the convention retained it. We had transmitted a lesson. 
No representative man or assemblage sitting under the flag of the 
United States has ever had the hardihood to dispute or even ignore 
this fundamental basis of our social and legal systems. 

Our scheme of popular education is the logical and necessary 
accompaniment of a plan of political government based upon free- 
dom of feeling, and thinking, and acting, with the utmost of oppor- 
tunity to every one. If religion enters into the making and the 
maintenance of the American nation and the several states, it 
enters into the schools of American states. They are the creations 
of the states. They came into being by the exercise of the sovereign 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 65 

political power of taxation. They could come in no other way. 
The schools rest upon precisely the same basis as the state. If 
the state were to be overthrown, the schools would fall. They are 
not only the opportunity of the citizen, they are the safety of the 
state. If the schools were to cease, the state would come to an 
end. If all of the training were to be in sectarian schools, the dif- 
ferences in the state might be expected to be as sharp as the differ- 
ence between the sects. Differences between the sects are not very 
serious when the sects make no laws and carry no swords, but with 
such powers such differences in the state might once again become 
very dangerous. And so, if the sects can not be recognized in the 
state, they can not be in the schools. 

The founders of the nation did very little about education or 
schools. They knew the importance of both, for the average of 
culture among them was high, but they reasoned that these inter- 
ests would take care of themselves. But the generation that came 
after them, and the succeeding generations more and more, saw 
that that was not so, and that schools would have to be maintained 
as well as encouraged by the state. Aid was first given to denomi- 
national colleges, but that was in the early colonial days when sub- 
stantially all the people in each colony were of one religious 
sect. It was the continuance of old world policies. When there 
were many sects, the aid had to be discontinued. The test came 
with the manifest necessity of public elementary schools. Then 
the schools had to rest upon the same basis as the state. And 
when it became clear that high schools and colleges would also have 
to be supported by taxation if we were to have a virile and balanced 
educational system, they too had to rest upon the same basis as the 
state. 

Nonsectarian schools are the only instruments by which our 
democracy can maintain itself and hold out the equal chance and 
the utmost of opportunity to every one. It is as true of the higher 
as of the lower schools. The state university rests upon precisely 
the same legal and philosophical footing as the public elementary 
school, and universities are quite as vital as elementary schools to a 
system of education equal to the demands of America in the twen- 
tieth century. The public college or university is needed in the 
American state for two great purposes; first, that there may be 
equality of educational opportunity, that every boy and girl may 
have his or her chance; and second, that the university may ener- 
gize the educational system and hold its parts in equilibrium while 
it stimulates all the intellectual activities of all the people. 



66 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

But religion and sectarianism are very different things, and re- 
ligion may enter into the American state and its schools when a 
church or a sect may not. If the perfervid denominationalists do 
not see that, all the other people do. And all the other people 
are vastly in the majority. Religion is the outflowing of the soul 
to a Supreme Being, with all that that implies. A church is a 
human creation to promote religious ends. Denominationalism rests 
upon one or another system of philosophy, that is, of human rea- 
soning, concerning religion. Of course, these philosophies are 
entitled to great regard, for they have come from great minds, have 
stood hard tests, have gathered many disciples, and accomplished 
large results. They have been the vehicles for carrying religion to 
the millions. But because it has become clear enough that it is 
bad, both for the state and the church, for a state to be mixed up 
with a church — even a good church — it is not in the possibilities 
that a democratic state can be without, or can fail to sustain, 
religious culture. God goes where He will. 

Religion is not barred from the schools, except when the leaders 
of the sects refuse to put religion above sectarianism and refuse 
to go where they can not propagate the particular tenets of their 
denomination, or except as denominationalists object to any ex- 
pression of religion in. the schools unless it be their own. The state 
does not object to the reading of the Bible in the schools. The 
legislative charter of the greatest city of the country even provides 
that it shall be done. The reading of the Bible was formerly very 
common in all the schools, and there is reason to think that it is 
more common now than many suppose. Doubtless this is the prac- 
tice in all our state universities, and in nearly all the high schools. 
If it is less common than formerly, it is because religious people 
have objected to its being done by any but themselves because of 
their fear that it would be done in ways or accompanied by expres- 
sions which would be inimical to their particular sectarian doctrines 
and interests. But while religion in the school might be helped 
by formal religious exercises, it is not suppressed by the omission 
of them. Religious feeling and culture are as inherent in the school 
as in the state, and if one form of expression is barred there will be 
others. 

There have been others. We have not suppressed and lessened 
the religion or the Qiristianity that we have inherited: we have 
expanded and enriched it. We have done this by distinguishing it 
from sectarianism. We have done it by putting it above sects, 
above a human organization called a church, above an intellectual 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 67 

philosophy called theology, and above a platform grown old called 
a creed. Religious expression may be even freer and richer in 
undenominational than in denominational institutions of higher 
learning, because discussion will be rife and free under the roof 
of a university, because there can be no sectarian limitation upon 
freedom of feeling and opinion, and because there can be no 
formalism and no venerated doctrine in the way of the pervasive 
and progressive power of God. 

Parenthetically, let it be said that this does not imply any dispar- 
agement of or disbelief in denominationalism. I will not be a 
mere theorist on either side of the question. Sectarianism is impor- 
tant, but not of the highest importance. It is itself the product of 
freedom, and it has enlarged freedom. It has kept and is keeping 
the beacon fires burning. It is to be sustained, but not to be taken 
too seriously. It is a means ; not the end. It was the logical result 
of religious persecution, and it is not a thing to die for when there 
is no persecution. Admitting that one church might be more con- 
genial to me than another, I would ask admission to any church, 
Protestant or Roman Catholic, which was much more convenient 
than any other. Perhaps one of the divine ends of the denomina- 
tional system is toleration, that religious toleration which is the 
groundwork of our American civilization. Possibly that may make 
us the most mutually helpful, and it ought to make us the most 
genuinely religious people in the world. 

And let no word here be construed into adverse comment upon 
such manifestations of sectarianism as parochial schools or so called 
Christian colleges. There were reasons enough for them, and the 
fruits which they have borne claim the greatest respect. Their work 
often is worthy of the highest commendation. There will always be 
enough for them to do. None opposes their continuance and all 
wish them well. In many cases they preceded the ample provision 
for education made by the state or its subdivisions; often they fill 
a place which would otherwise be vacant ; commonly the state owes 
them a debt which can never be paid. It is to be regretted that 
we can not come to agreement upon some basis of popular educa- 
tion and religious culture which would be repugnant to none, and 
which would relieve the denominations and the churches from the 
effort and expense for instruction that the most forceful of them 
feel bound to make. And we should stand always ready to take 
any step not inconsistent with our fundamental plan which will 
contribute to that end. 



68 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

We will allow for the differing points of view. We will do what 
we can to make good fellowship. We will ask critics to see that 
any scarcity of candidates for the Christian ministry is not due to 
so called " godless state universities " which in the nature of things 
can not be godless. The democratic university was destined to 
come in any event, and is one of the logical products and instru- 
ments of a great civilization ; and the civilization which has brought 
it forth is one of the most remarkable in all human history. All 
should join in making the nonsectarian schools just as religious as 
possible ; believing that the prosperity of every higher institution 
of learning will add to the prosperity of every other which tries 
unselfishly to promote the common good of men. 

But now to the question which has been too long delayed. Have 
we been retrograding in morals ? We have been progressing in 
every other way. All manner of people keep coming to us in 
ever increasing numbers. We have always feared that they might 
make self-government unsafe. But they have not : we have assimi- 
lated them. Democracy is stronger than it ever was. We have 
been making intellectual progress. The United States is accumu- 
lating a fine literature, and is now carrying on the greatest pub- 
lishing business in the world. We have forged ahead industrially, 
and we are beginning to conserve resources and apply science to 
our industries. And we have been making political progress too. 
The understanding of public questions grows clearer and more 
universal, and the voting of the people more intelligent. The moral 
right was never more splendidly asserted in public life, and the 
issue of political contests was never to be relied upon more con- 
fidently than now. While all this has been going on, have we been 
growing morally obtuse and degenerate? There is nothing to 
signify it. One who is frightened about that has hardly read the 
literature of the times with a student's care. We are surely 
enough none too good, but that there has been any general breaking 
down of moral sense, any increase in the ratio of crimes or of 
little meannesses out of proportion to the increase of population, 
appears to be without evidence and against the evidence. 

Of course, we have more people to govern. Certainly they are 
not as homogeneous as the people used to be. This throng not only 
has to be governed, but the governing must be done by and through 
themselves. It is harder for ninety millions than for nine millions 
to govern themselves. We have more crimes of every kind because 
there are more people, just as we have more accidents because there 
are more railroads. It is hard to keep our criminal laws and our 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 69 

judicial procedure up to the needs of such a rapidly growing throng 
and of a civilization that quickly becomes more and more complex. 

While the people have increased twentyfold, the opportunities 
and the temptations for wrong have increased an hundredfold. We 
have more banks and more embezzlements than we used to have, 
but every banker in the land knows that the measure of integrity 
among the officers and employees of banks has steadily advanced; 
and all the world ought to know that the moral fiber of the men 
whose business it is to handle money is infinitely stronger than 
that of those who are not subjected to such temptations. Undoubt- 
edly our vast mining, and manufacturing, and transportation in- 
dustries, have produced some very artistic scoundrelism, and the 
influence upon the plain people, and certainly upon the very poor, 
is bad ; but it looks as though the excrescences incident to new and 
great undertakings were being brought to the level of right and to 
the bar of the law. 

The standards which ought to be applied to new situations are 
becoming more clearly understood and more firmly established, 
and the demand for their enforcement is one which no public officer 
dare trifle with. And on the whole, munificence outruns meanness, 
and the purpose to be a decent citizen and of some real use in the 
world was never stronger or more pointed than it is being made 
in this country by the leveling and inspiring influence of American 
public opinion. 

We ought not to forget either that we know more, at least we 
read more, of the badness than of the goodness that is among us, 
because the newspapers find it more profitable to publish it, and 
the newspapers are in every hand. But every one knows that 
there is infinitely more goodness than badness in the crowd, and 
it is by no means certain that the laying bare of what is wrong does 
not develop the purpose to punish it, rather than the disposition to 
participate in it. 

Men and women are the creatures of environment and of work, 
and the character of a whole people is marvelously influenced by 
the institutions under which they live and the privileges which they 
become accustomed to exercise. No one can fail to know that this 
is the land of opportunity, and few can fail to see that people are 
uplifted by doing things; and the percentage of those who go to 
the bad or amount to nothing is smaller than it would be without 
the freedom of opportunity and the prizes and responsibilities 
which accompany results. This is a poor place for one who be- 
lieves that people must be kept from the activities and temptations 



yO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

of life to be made good. It is a good country for those who have 
confidence in the qualities which God has implanted in human 
nature, and are not apprehensive about the evolution of those 
qualities to their logical possibilities. It must be rather a trying 
place for narrow and cynical souls who imagine that they were 
created to sit in judgment upon the motives of other people, but it 
does very well for all who can realize that, 

" There is so much bad in the best of us, 
And so much good in the worst of us, 
That it hardly behooves any of us 
To talk about the rest of us." 

With toleration as the groundwork of our American life, our 
judgment of personal conduct has become less severe. There is 
reason enough to believe that it has become more, rather than less, 
just. We have come to admit the good, as well- as the bad, in men 
whose lives do not move in the same grooves as our own, and of 
whose habits we are often bound to disapprove. 

Our standards change, and the change does not imperil the moral 
situation. Years ago I had an acquaintance who would never have 
been thought of as a religious man. He was generous, loyal, and 
heroic to a fault, and he paid his debts, but very often his walk 
and conversation did not square with our standards. He was the 
political " ward boss." He was the foreman of a steam fire engine 
company. At a large fire his daring led him into great peril, and 
a wall fell upon and crushed him. As they carried him up the 
street on a stretcher, just at the dawn of a summer morning, he 
broke out in a clear tenor voice and sang correctly three verses of 
" Jesus, lover of my soul, Let me to thy bosom fly," then turned 
over and died. It involves no apology for the irregularities of his 
life to ask, Was this man without religious feeling? Were not his 
faults superficial and his virtues fundamental? Would it not re- 
quire unwarranted assurance and conceit to say that the prayer of 
the old hymn which he sang at the gate of Heaven was denied him ? 
Surely we see into some of these things a little more clearly than 
our good fathers did, and let us not forget that we see them more 
clearly because the progress of our country has clarified the atmos- 
phere through which we have to look. 

It must be admitted that the police power is not exercised in 
this country as in the older countries which maintain large armies, 
have many great cities, and are thoroughly accustomed to the 
constant and harsh rule of the military and the police. We are 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS JI 

fretted by the delays in the execution of laws which can hardly 
keep pace with advances in population and the multiplying com- 
plexities of our civilization; but we want no standing army except 
to meet necessities for protection against insurrection, and no police 
which is not keyed to the spirit of the country. The popular con- 
fidence in democratic government is absolute, and wherever there 
is any real exigency the resources of the country prove equal to it. 

The liberalizing which has been going on generally has of course 
extended to the children and to the schools. There is less control 
in the schools. A liberalized philosophy of education may have 
gone to extremes. It is to be feared that children are less respect- 
ful and obedient than was once the case. They too partake of what 
goes on about them, but of the good as well as of the bad; and as 
they advance in years the most of them get more of the good than 
the bad. Children do some lying and pilfering of sweetmeats, 
but so did we when we were children. But on the whole children 
live more rational lives; the influences of intellectual culture have 
marvelously augmented; there is a wider range of healthful sports; 
there is less whining and sniveling ; the value of work is taught ; 
every influence of the school is distinctly moral ; children are made 
to know, just as well as they can know, what are the conditions of 
success and of gaining respect in the world. Perhaps the superfi- 
cial faults are more manifest, but possibly the fundamental virtues 
are more sure. 

And, whether or no the morals of the people and of the children 
are better or worse than they used to be, when was it determined 
that the homes and the churches might shift upon the schools the 
responsibility for a distinct moral and religious training? There 
is some reason for believing that in general parents are more dere- 
lict than teachers about the conduct of children; and if there is 
any reason to fear that the work of some of the churches is less 
vitalizing and controlling than it might be, it is desirable that a frank 
and searching analysis of the reasons should be made by those who 
are in a situation to make it. 

The schools do not dictate our policies : they follow them. 
They do not determine our civilization : they respond to it. The 
public schools are certainly secular. They must avoid sectarian 
contentions, and church distinctions, and the mere theology upon 
which religious scholars often indulge in combat for their intellec- 
tual health. But the schools can not avoid the enforcement of moral 
conduct, the exemplification of the basis of correct living, and the 
exploitation of religious principles. They will go as far in this as 



J2 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

they are allowed to go. And they ought to be able to go a long way 
without invading the exclusive domain of the religious denom- 
inations. 

Let the Bible be read in the schools and let songs of praise be 
•sung, until some external authority tells them they must stop. Let 
the schools be a little more forceful in control, and a little more 
specific in commanding obedience and respect. Let them seek with 
new earnestness to create motive in the mind of the child. Let 
them accentuate the vital need which men and women have to 
work ; and the vital importance to themselves that they shall lend a 
hand to others and give service to the village and the city, the state 
and the nation. Let them never forget that there can be no real 
strength, either moral or physical, without the opportunity to do, 
and without both doing what is rational and right and resisting 
what is senseless or wrong. And let them realize, more and more 
keenly, that the way to put all this into the hearts and heads of 
children is by the teachers thinking it and by the schools acting 
upon it themselves. Above all, let them remember that character 
must go with intelligence, and that character is not a mere matter 
of form but a drawing out of the spirit into helpful relations with 
the world. 

"All are but parts of one stupendous whole 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul." 

And whatever the schools do, let them do it with a purpose to 
give no offense to any whose thought and outlook are not exactly 
like their own. 

All manner of schools, of every kind and under all auspices, 
constitute the educational system of America. That system is the 
freest, and the most flexible and adaptable of the educational sys- 
tems of the world. It is developing broad and strong scholarship. 
Its doors swing to every one. It is showing what a people can do 
for their own advancement, and what it has already done is the 
best proof of what it can yet do. 

There is no ground for apprehension. We have a sense of 
humor and the courage of our situation. We are developing insti- 
tutions to promote our every thought. There is overwhelming 
good, unmeasured progress, and little, mighty little, that is bad in 
Our laws and institutions. We inherited much from the mother 
country, and we have gathered much from all countries ; but we 
have done more for ourselves than any other land ever did for us. 
And, " We, the people," have done it. No monarch, no lords, no 



PUBLIC MORALS AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS 73 

man on horseback, no sect, and no professional or other class, 
have either been asked to permit, or allowed to limit us in doing it. 
The Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation 
declared in the name of the states; but in the Constitution " we, 
the people," established the more perfect union. And the laws of 
the Union and the constitutions and laws of all the states declare 
so plainly that they come from the same great source, that no rep- 
resentative or officer of any standing can be so blind as to fail to 
see it, or so stupid as to obstruct the opinion of the country. There 
is no fiction about it ; it is serious, pervasive, continuing fact. And 
how could the people exercise all of this freedom, and bear all of 
this burden, without the mixing and the training of common schools, . 
reaching from the kindergarten to the university? 

And how can a people exercise all of this freedom, and create 
all of this opportunity, without either growing in grace or going 
to the bad? Surely there will be no middle ground. We shall 
never be an inane, insipid people. We have done much to dis- 
tinguish ourselves; we shall do much more. There is no doubt 
about the road we shall take. There is no ground for skepticism 
about the moral purpose of the plain people. There is much more 
goodness than badness among us. It will keep us in the middle 
of the road, and guide us to a success which will enlarge spiritu- 
ality, as well as liberty, in all the world. 

This is a poor country for one who lives wholly in himself. It 
is a good country for all who trust in God and have confidence 
in men and women. There is no better religious teacher in America 
than my friend Henry Van Dyke, and we are all glad to join in 
the refrain of the song he wrote upon his last voyage from Europe. 

"Oh, it's home again, and home again, America for me, 
My heart is turning home again to God's countrie, 
To the land of youth and freedom, beyond the ocean bars 
Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars. 

So it's home again and home again, America for me, 

My heart is turning home again to God's countrie, 

To the blessed land of Room Enough, beyond the ocean bars ^ 

Where the air is full of sunshine, and the flag is full of stars. 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 

We are under a tolerant and hospitable roof today. This would 
not be a university if it limited discussion or excluded any rational 
opinion. It could not be the university of a splendid free state in 
which a common religion is the predominant bond of union, if it 
were to do anything to submerge religious feeling, or to subvert 
religious theory. On the other hand, it is to discriminate between 
what is of God and what is of man ; and it is to analyze what is 
only human opinion although it concerns religious things. 

There have been and there are many religions. None of them 
is to be tabooed so long as its fruits are good. People often, and 
scholars sometimes, differ over mere names, or because of opposing 
sympathies, traditions, and outlooks. The glory of the American 
State University is that it is as religious as the people who sustain 
it, and that its reasoning about religion is as tolerant as the con- 
stitution of the state for which it stands. Here of all places feel- 
ing should have free flow, and any errors which usage and habit 
have brought down to us should be hammered out on the anvil of 
rational and generous discussion. On the other hand, this is no 
place for insipidity or inanity. We believe in something beyond 
flesh and blood; something that is beyond the earth and sun, be- 
yond the planets and the stars. Let it be something that will sus- 
tain men and women; something that bears a rational relation to 
life and progress, and something that is worthy of a university. 

Conceit must not limit the meaning of education. There is an 
education of the heart as well as an education of the mind; there 
is an education of the body which ought to go with the healthful 
training of the intellectual powers, as well as with the healthful 
governance of the emotions. Education is not confined to what is 
found in books or taught in schools. It would be a pity if it were. 
The greater part of education comes from environment and con- 
tacts — from the external influences which bear down upon us. 
Experience is a great teacher. One may turn the rough ore into 
iron beams, or steel rails, or razor blades, or cambric needles, or 
watch springs; it all depends upon the kind and extent of the 
treatment. It is the tempering and the hammering that fix the 
value of the finished product. It is so with the human faculties. 
' Address at University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, Sunday, November 7, 

I9 ° 9 ' ' r- 1 

[74] 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 75 

The influence of the schools has a momentous bearing upon the 
development of the mind and soul — momentous in itself, and still 
more momentous because it prepares the ground for all other in- 
fluences, and makes other contacts fruitful. But the other influ- 
ences may outnumber and outweigh the influences of the schools. 
The whole world is relative. What we are depends very largely 
upon the road we have traveled, the persons to whom and the 
things to which we have been related. 

The education of the nation is measured by the extent to which 
the life of the people has been energized. National energy is gen- 
erated by the contacts which result from freedom of movement, 
freedom of thought, and freedom of expression among the people. 
Mere knowledge may not be power. Action produces power. Great 
movements among the people have invariably sharpened their wits 
and advanced their civilization. There is nothing so discouraging 
as stagnation. Slavery in whatever form — to ignorance, to caste, 
to superstition, to kingly or military power — is the greatest enemy 
of education. When a nation is in bondage of any kind the will 
of the individual counts for little and the national thought is weak. 
Nothing but a movement of intense energy and of wide proportions 
can break the bonds, liberate the truth, and open the way for na- 
tional feeling, for intellectual and spiritual development, and for 
individual action. 

Great national movements follow neither sentiment, nor passion, 
nor caprice. They rest upon the impulses of the heart and the 
convictions of the mind. They are moved by the spirit of the 
Almighty God working in the lives of men. Conscience movements 
never fail. They may be delayed, but they always accumulate in 
numbers as they gain in power, and they succeed in the end. 

Christianity is the prevailing religion of America, and an Amer- 
ican university can not help seeing that Christianity has been more 
potent than any other force in breaking the bonds of ignorance 
and superstition, of greed and caste, in which the world's people 
were held through long cycles of time. Educationally as well as 
religiously considered, the birth of Christ is the most wonderful 
and consequential event in all the world's history. 

Before that time all is involved in mystery. Two> or three bright 
spots appear upon the great, dark sea of uncertain history. We 
know that the Persians and Egyptians left evidences of mechanical 
skill, but the pyramids are proof of the absolute power of the 
monarch rather than of the intellectual virility of the people. We 
know that Greece made great advances in art, but we know, also, 



/6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

that four fifths of her people were slaves to one fifth, and that her 
temples crumbled because her moral and civic conditions could not 
sustain them. We know about the Roman republic, the growth of 
the Roman law, and the power of the Roman legions ; but we know, 
also, that the Roman republic was a republic in name only; that 
the law was the harsh instrument of absolutism ; and that the 
strength of the legions rested, not upon conscience, but upon ac- 
customed obedience to the commands of the master. The common 
life of each of these peoples was honeycombed with the most de- 
grading and undisguised immorality. No matter what some of 
them did ; no matter what many of them did at the behest of a few, 
the plane of their lives was low and the trend of their thought was 
vicious and brutal. They worshipped idols, and the gods they set 
up were cunning, depraved and brutal. Their conceptions of God 
are the revelation of themselves. Besides these two or three points 
upon the map of the ancient world where the breaking day first 
began to dawn, all was ignorance and barbarism. All the known 
world was upon the borders of the Mediterranean, and all beyond 
was as black as the darkest night upon the waters of that great, 
blue sea. 

But a star shone over the hills of Bethlehem. It heralded not 
only the birth of a Savior, but it marked the advent of a new force 
which was to break bonds and conquer superstition, and educate 
men more thoroughly and rapidly than all the other forces the 
world had yet known. The Savior came to fulfill prophecy and 
die upon the cross, and then His disciples were to take the instru- 
ment of His death as the emblem of their faith, and, multiplying 
as they went, they were to carry the banner of the cross over every 
sea and into every clime, and extend the new force around and 
around and around the world, until its energizing influence should 
impel the self-consciousness of men to- work out the world's regen- 
eration and enlightenment. 

We can not see electricity, but we know that there is such an 
agent for we see its results. We can not see magnetism, but we 
know what it does. We can not see the human conscience, but do 
we doubt that there is such a thing? We see the results of truth. 
We know about the organization and operations of the early church, 
narrated both by biblical and profane history. We know how 
strong the truth was, and how effective that church was, because 
they aroused bitter persecutions and yet endured. We see an end- 
less line of martyrs for conscience sake, and in turn we see that 
the blood of the martyrs multiplies the followers of the Nazarene. 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 77 

As churches multiplied they became centers of instruction. Free 
conscience and instruction create widespread energy in the world. 
Great armies, under the sign of the cross, march thousands of 
miles to reclaim a mere tomb, because a sacred one, from the hands 
of the profane. They fail in the attempt, but they shake the na- 
tions ; they enlarge knowledge ; they sharpen intelligence ; they put 
a new meaning and a new energy into life, and they open the way 
for a new civilization. 

Truth will not be bound. It is as free as electricity, and like 
that agent it needs only vehicles of transmission. As men come 
and go and the outposts of the old ignorance move backward, other 
followers gather about the standard and the spires of many more 
churches point heavenward. As each repeats the wondrous story, 
how it more and more stirs the conscience, sharpens the wits, and 
multiplies and quickens the activities of the people ! 

But an evil day came upon Mother Church. Her base was not 
strong enough for her superstructure. Greed was rampant. There 
was intrigue with the adversary. She sought to control the earth 
more than to conquer evil. She undertook to manage states. Her 
organization and her power were put to base uses. The most 
dreadful things were done in her fair name. The end was a mighty 
conflagration which overthrew her priesthood and broke down her 
temples. 

The end, did I say? Ah! that was but the beginning, not the 
end. The plans of the Almighty do not come to naught through 
the weakness or the machinations of men. The Spirit of Christian- 
ity arose phoenixlike above the flames, purer, stronger, freer, be- 
cause refined by bitter experience and purged of the things which 
had brought destruction upon the earthly house in which she lived. 
The mighty work of the church upon the people, the intelligence 
which they had derived from her teachings, proved equal to her 
regeneration. 

There was revolt and revolution. New creeds were framed 
which expressed many phases o>f human feelings and human 
thought, but all blended in a very common purpose and pointed to 
a very common end. New forms of worship accommodated the 
tastes and the means of all. Out of it all came the sects and de- 
nominations. And how these sects and denominations have ex- 
tended and grown ! How God used the low state of his church 
to multiply his instruments and extend his power! There have 
been disagreeable phases of denominationalism, but more good than 



78 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

harm has resulted. The friction points have become fewer in 
number and less irritating as the centuries have run their course. 
While the sects have rivalled each other in energy they have grown 
to respect one another more and more, and they are nearer to- 
gether in feeling and purpose today than ever before since they 
sprung out of the deplorable state of the church which marked 
the beginning of the fifteenth century. 

It is of course impossible and unnecessary to follow these sects 
in detail, but two or three illustrations will show how denomina- 
tionalism has been enlightening the world. 

Take for example the work of the Jesuits of the old Roman 
church. Much reproach has been cast upon them. Doubtless some 
of it has been with, but much of it has been without, justice. The 
history of the world shows nothing comparable with their labors 
for the christianization of the world and the regeneration of the 
church. Composed of young men sworn to chastity and to poverty, 
to unhesitating compliance with regime and implicit obedience to 
authority, the members of this order took their lives in their hands 
in the darkest day of human progress, and went hither and yon 
among the people, pushing their way up the streams and into the 
forests of the unexplored and the unknown, to convert sinners. 
Taking as their motto, " I go out, but I shall not return," they went 
unhesitatingly to savage torture and to death. And when one fell, 
another as unhesitatingly took his life in his hands and filled the 
place. In simple garb and with winning ways they pushed on and 
on, not only preaching but trying to exemplify the gospel of their 
Christ. They believed some things to which we would not now 
subscribe. They surrendered individuality to a great system to an 
extent from which many of us, at least, would dissent. But we 
have too generous feelings, we have advanced too far towards one- 
ness of feeling, we have all become too intelligent, to withhold our 
sympathy and respect from men and women who devote their lives 
to the conversion of the world, and whose one ambition in life is 
to carry the banner of the cross furthest into the ranks of the 
enemies of their Redeemer and of the church of their love. 

And how these Jesuits provided the object lesson for the devel- 
oping spirit of Protestantism ! That spirit could not see their vir- 
tues, but it could not fail to be influenced by their self-sacrifice, 
their aggressiveness, and their intrepidity. If the work of the 
Jesuits added fuel to the flame of the old-time Protestant hatred 
of the Romish church, it also added strength and power to the 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 79 

fiber of Protestant life. How things do work together for good! 
How the things to which we have alluded have worked together 
for the regeneration of the world ! 

For another example, take a subdivision of the Protestant 
church — that other uncompromising and austere sect with which 
many of us are doubtless in closer sympathy, the Puritans, using 
the term not in a particular but in a general way. Their creed 
has been o<f itself an educational power in the world. John Calvin 
had the clearest and most logical intellect thrown to< the surface 
in the upheaval attendant upon the Protestant Reformation. The 
creed he framed is metaphysical and, to me, unfathomable, but 
through all intervening generations it has been a fruitful subject 
for intellectual discussion, if not for intellectual dissipation, among 
theological experts. If minds have not been sharpened on that, 
it will be difficult to find an intellectual grindstone upon which they 
may be given a keen edge. But surely it was no less spiritual than 
intellectual. If this creed was an educator for the educated, it at 
the same time trained teachers for the masses. It generated 
thought. It gave rise to endless discussion. It is the occasion 
of much discussion still. Closely logical, it placed the severest 
constructions upon the Scriptures. It drew from its constructions 
its own logical inferences, and then sternly demanded for its own 
deductions the weight of divine authority. The minister was held 
to be the oracle of God, and he exacted, and commonly secured, 
for all the utterances from his pulpit the same reverence and obedi- 
ence as for the simplest ethical declaration of the inspired Word. 

The observance of this creed, thus expounded, was general and 
severe. It shaped and guided the lives of millions of people. 
Their regard for the truth was such that to hear a misstatement, 
or what they conceived to be one, without correcting it, to see a 
misdeed without rebuking it, was held to be participation in the 
evil. It directed the trend of their .thought and fixed the habits 
of their minds. Their dress was somber, their faces long, their 
manners strained, their decorum rigid, their conscience keen, their 
discipline unrelenting. They were intolerant to the last degree. 
There was more punishment than love in their theology. All but 
Puritans were heretics, and heretics ought to be fuel for hell fire. 

Few of us accept it as our good fathers did. But these Puritans 
have had a telling influence upon the christianization and upon the 
education of the world. The outgrowth of the Protestant Reforma- 
tion, developed in despotic times, with a deep and logical faith, 



80 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

with a character disciplined and intensified by persecution, with 
every sinew of their moral natures made hardy by experience, they 
were the very people to oppose the will of the king when con- 
science was involved. They were the inevitable and true champions 
of religious liberty. 

It is true they did not understand religious liberty in the sense 
that we do. In their thought it applied only to themselves. But 
they knew veiy well what it meant to them. Their faith and their 
manner of worship were things to be defended to the bitter end. 
There could be no other way. They could die, but they could 
not have their faith trampled upon nor their forms of worship 
molested. Fire and blood were as nothing compared with religious 
liberty for themselves. 

What a mighty step in human progress this stand for religious 
liberty was ! It led naturally and necessarily to a stand for civil 
liberty as well. The two had to go together. The Puritans be- 
came valiant and successful warriors in bloody battles for both. 
They learned their own strength and they added thereto in the 
learning. They showed that men of conscience are the greatest 
fighters and the best learners the world brings forth. 

These Puritans were confined to no nationality. They spoke 

divers languages. They were the product of something in the 

world which recognized no political boundaries and knew no racial 

differences. In the Netherlands, in the world's first great battle 

for liberty, an hundred thousand of them reddened the great North 

sea with their blood. The slaughter of sixty thousand of them in 

France was begun upon a signal from the tower of Notre Dame 

cathedral in Paris, and followed by a Te Deum from St Peter's 

at Rome. But it could not break the spirit of the mass. It only 

drove other thousands of them into the very heart of the battle 

with an heroism which not only made the white plumes of a king 

historic, but also changed the whole course of history for millions 

of people. 

" Oh ! was there ever such a knight, 
In friendship or in war, 
As our Sovereign Lord, King Henry, 
The soldier of Navarre?" 

In England they overturned the English throne and took the 
head of an English king. At Marston Moor and Naseby and Dun- 
bar, these straight-faced, mild-mannered, somber-minded Christian 
men showed valor which has ever since been the talk of the world, 
which is justly the pride of every one with a tinge of Puritan 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 8l 

blood, and which laid every lover of liberty, in all generations, 
under enduring obligations to them. But there were factors in 
Puritanism necessary in other times which are neither necessary 
nor desirable now. 

The faith and character of Puritanism naturally led to and was 
admirably adapted to pioneering. Its stalwart arm could break 
new lands and build new homes where others would fail. It could 
do, and wait, and endure. Puritan homes were well ordered within 
and measurably secure from without, even at a distance from estab- 
lished government and beyond the reach of constitutions and laws. 

These people have had a great part in shaping the institutions 
of this country. In the New World they improved upon their 
character in the Old World. They retained its virtues while they 
eliminated some of its faults. They were guilty of some unex- 
plainable inconsistencies, viewed in the light of our day, but they 
got rid of many of them more quickly than did the people they 
left behind them. There is no occasion to forget or deny their 
faults, or unduly extol their virtues, or credit them with things 
that do not belong to them. Just as it was, the Puritan church 
was the instrument of the Almighty in fixing the plane and setting 
the pace of American national life, more than any other single 
element which entered into it. 

It would be interesting, to me at least, to trace the influences 
of other creeds, and to record the great deeds of other classes of 
men and women whose lives have been moulded and directed by 
their creeds. It might be profitable to lay creeds side by side and 
work out their similarities and differences, and study out the con- 
sequent results upon individual life and upon world history. It 
surely would be fascinating to see how the different creeds and the 
various denominations of Christians have influenced each other; 
and certainly it would be gratifying to study the growth of tolera- 
tion, and to see how the aggressiveness of faith and the toleration 
of opinions have combined in the largest measure of civil and re- 
ligious liberty the world has ever known. 

Freedom on the basis of justice has been the forerunner of edu- 
cation. The church assemblage, where the gospel was read, prayers 
offered, hymns sung, and doctrine expounded, was indeed a school. 
But the church did much more than this in the way of schools. It 
is gratifying to note the extent to which the great church, includ- 
ing all denominations, has fostered learning, and founded and en- 
dowed schools. It is not extravagant to say that the church has 



82 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

been the mainstay of the schools. When the glad hour for the 
separation of church and state came in America, it was the com- 
monly accepted doctrine that the state had no responsibility con- 
cerning schools. The clergy had the most of what learning there 
was. The church was the first to appreciate the need of schools. 
The necessity of an educated clergy was imperative. The church 
became the natural support of the schools. Commonly she main- 
tained them directly and in her own name, as some of her denomi- 
nations still do-. Preacher and teacher were one. Children must 
be able to read the Bible and learn the catechism. There must be 
Latin schools and colleges for the ministers of the church and the 
officers of the state. The first universities were the offspring of 
the cathedrals. The church has always been the strong support of 
literature, science, and philosophy. The profound thinkers of the 
world's early history were invariably the trained theologians. In 
a word, where the church has flourished there the schools have 
been most numerous and most effective. But of course the exigen- 
cies and the logic of the church have limited the scope and the 
teachings of the church schools. 

And how the songs of the churches have educated the masses 
through many generations ! Some one has said that more people 
have been sung into the Kingdom of Heaven than have been argued 
into it, and quite likely that is true. The sweet sentiments and the 
soft melodies of the songs of the churches have touched the hearts 
and cultivated the taste of the millions of the world for thousands 
of years. 

It is easier to search the past than it is to see the future. It is 
easier to speculate than it is to suggest methods that will stand 
analysis. But the steady advance of the church in the past be- 
speaks a further advance. The influence which the church has 
long exerted for the enlightenment of the world must surely con- 
tinue. It will have to abide by the always consistent truth which 
has made it the power that it is. It will have to go forward amid 
new conditions. Being loyal to the truth, it will have to be more 
tolerant of opinion than it has sometimes been. The change in 
intellectual conditions is overwhelming. The church can neither 
ignore the lights in which it lives nor oppose the scientific knowl- 
edge which the schools unlock. She will have to meet new cir- 
cumstances with new methods and be guided by the light of the 
fires her own hand has kindled. 

The life of the people is freer than it used to be. The severe, 



THE CHURCH INFLUENCE IN EDUCATION 83 

strained life of the fathers was unnatural. Life is more rapid. 
It used to be intense in its sluggishness and its stateliness. Now 
it is intense in its activity. Men who succeed in affairs are all in 
a hurry. But rational amusements are softening and tempering 
life, manly and womanly sports are more common, and they act 
as an antidote to impetuosity. Of course there are evil tendencies 
and accompanying dangers, but the dangers are no greater now 
than they used to be. It may well be doubted if they are so great. 
Whether they are, or not, the new manner of life is here. The 
hands do not move backward upon the dial. The church is bound 
to rationally adapt its methods to the new conditions. The great 
trend of human life is not all wrong. The church is neither to 
wear sackcloth nor linen that is finer than need be ; it is to act 
naturally and meet conditions sanely as they develop; it is to avoid 
both sensationalism and dilettanteism. 

The church must keep in touch and sympathy with the great 
mass of those who work with their hands and heads and hearts 
to keep the wheels of the world's affairs in motion. It must keep 
in touch with the leaders of thought and the lovers of sport. It 
must make them comfortable in its atmosphere. If it is sound and 
true they will be sympathetic with its faith and responsive to its 
teachings and, as they are numbered among its children, they will 
augment its power and increase its usefulness in the world. 
Natural Christianity and hearty church work make robust men and 
sinewy women, and they are the kind that count in the world. 

The sixteenth century was one of marked spiritual activity. 
The nineteenth century was one of marked material development. 
In the former the conditions led the people to> like much preaching. 
Involved argument, whether they digested it or not, was acceptable 
to them, for it was about all the intellectual food they had. Their 
moral natures were intense and easily wrought up, and oratorical 
play upon them was not disagreeable. The masses have no end 
of things to think about now. They partake of the spirit of the 
age. They want a rational philosophy and they like to accomplish 
things. They not only partake of the spirit, but they sympathize 
with the methods of the age. It is an age of organization. Some 
one has said that the first exclamation of the young American in 
his cradle is " Mr President." Then the preaching must be the 
simple truth as discerned by revelation, and the application thereof 
to important subjects of common and timely interest. The effec- 
tiveness of the church will not depend more upon the capability 



84 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

of the minister as a preacher than as a worker and organizer. 
The number of organizations for good ends, the number of people 
who are interested in them, the extent to which all can be kept 
active, will go far to determine the measure of success. 

The state has assumed charge of education in all its grades. It 
rears the primary school and the university alike. It extends its 
hand to people of all conditions. This is so in the United States 
more than in any other country in the world, and it is more con- 
spicuously so in the Western States than in any other states in 
the Union. This plan has of course grown out of the world's 
experience, out of our own necessities, and out of our self-conscious 
power. It has been found imperative to the safety of universal 
suffrage. The United States puts into her schools the moneys 
which other nations put into their standing armies. Would that 
the same could be said about her navy. But that is far from the 
whole of it. She has made her unrivalled educational system more 
for opportunity than for security. 

In this half hour we have been traveling over a long, great road. 
We have been on a limited train and we have been going faster 
than we ever did before. We have looked out of a clouded win- 
dow once in a thousand miles. University students need to tramp 
along that road afoot and turn over every stone they come upon. 
It will help fit them for life in the land of opportunity. 

Iowa is a favored spot in that land. Its soil and climate are 
unsurpassed. Its situation with reference to travel and transporta- 
tion is fortunate. Better than all else, it was settled by the bravest 
and best of pioneers, and it has at all times held a conspicuous 
place in the front rank of industrial thrift and of intellectual 
progress. All that will continue. You, young men and women 
of Iowa, have small occasion to worry about your state. You may 
well have some solicitude about yourselves. The next generation 
will be an even greater generation than the last one. Your place 
in it will have to be determined by yourselves. But if you will 
know about the influences which have made and the lights which 
have illumined the world, if you will do your own thinking and keep 
in company with the truth, if you will be tolerant and generous 
and work agreeably with other people, and if you will appreciate 
what Iowa is doing for you, you will be very worthy and very 
promising citizens of a noble commonwealth. 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL 

TRAINING 

During more years than our memories cover, the plain people 
of this country, in their homes and assemblies, through their maga- 
zines and newspapers, have urged a kind of education which would 
be of actual service to the hand industries and to the men and 
women who pursue them. Here and there the imperative need of 
skilled workmen has led a manufacturing corporation to set up a 
school for its own very restricted purposes, without making any 
impression upon the general situation. Now and then a philan- 
thropist has established, and perhaps endowed, an industrial school 
and so helped a few people, but the net result has proved little more 
than the good intentions of a man and the utter inability of charity 
to deal with a large subject of common import to very independent 
American freemen. The common feeling was well known but no 
one saw just how to satisfy the demand, and the country was 
probably not ready for a movement which could meet it even 
measurably. 

The schools have never shown real grasp of the subject or 
proposed substantial measures for its solution. They made some 
rather encouraging advances in the direction of it when they estab- 
lished manual training in the high schools, and separate manual 
training high schools in the larger cities ; but it is now evident 
enough that that movement, with all of its excellencies, has gone 
around the real question, and has not had, and is not likely to have, 
any substantial result in the training of workmen. 

The manual training movement' has played upon the very com- 
mon but often misguided ambitions of the youth of the country. 
It has created schools, which like all the other schools, were cal- 
culated to lead to higher schools. It has provided one section in 
a roadway leading to a profession. Of course it was a profession 
concerning mechanics, but a profession all the same. It has aimed 
at a calling which would be carried on in an office or which would 
manage a business and direct men, and would avoid the smut that 
is inherent in the factory and the grime that comes with the 
handling of tools, machinery, and materials. Its most enthusiastic 
advocates have commonly asserted that its real end was intellectual 

Address before the Massachusetts State Teachers Association, Worcester, 
Mass., November 26, 1909. 

[85] 



86 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

culture by means of hand culture, rather than mechanical efficiency 
itself. For its avowed purposes the reasoning and the plan were 
logical enough. But let us not shut our eyes to the fact that it 
does not embody the logic or present the plan of procedure which 
the country and the greater number of its youth most need. It 
has been managed by men who were speciously theoretical rather 
than mechanically skillful. It has aimed at culture, but such cul- 
ture as has resulted is essentially superficial. If not so, then it has 
been a kind of culture which was of small concern to the country 
and little advantage to youth. It has aided a kind of progress, 
individually and collectively, educationally and commercially, which 
needs little stimulus in view of the American temperament and the 
manifold and inevitable activities of our American life. It has 
done little to maintain or to restore the equilibrium between the 
intellectual and the industrial life of the country. In shorter and 
stronger phrase, it has done little to train workmen, when what 
the larger part of the children most needed was to be trained into 
workmen, and when what the country most needed was that more 
workmen should be trained. 

In the meantime, the industries of the country have claimed 
more and more workmen and the number of skilled workmen has, 
relatively at least, grown smaller and smaller. The trades have 
been exceedingly conservative about training workmen lest thereby 
they reduce the wage, and probably it is not too much to say that 
while a high and a still higher measure of mechanical skill has been 
more and more in demand, the trades have grown more and more 
incapable of training, as well as more and more unwilling to train 
that skill into their children. The net result has been that boys 
who might have been glorious mechanics have often become very 
inglorious lawyers and physicians ; and both the prosperity of the 
country and the happiness of innumerable men and women have 
been lessened because of it. Children have hardly been free to 
choose the calling to which they were best adapted or which they 
might like best. By inevitable implication, if not by direct word, 
they have been told, nearly every day and both in the schools and 
out, that unless they worked with their heads rather than with their 
hands, that unless they came to be managers of great enterprises 
or captains of men, they would miss the great goal which it was 
the opportunity and the business of the American child to gain. 

And while this has been going on the schools have been sub- 
merged in educational theory which seems better suited to the 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 87 

next world, or at most to some other world, than to this. It has 
anticipated the aeroplane, and while heavier than air it has flown 
among clouds. The men and women of the schools have rather 
liked it, without always swallowing it, because it added to the 
gayety of the educational conventions and provided rather fas- 
cinating copy for the educational journals. The men and women 
outside of the schools have distrusted without being able or much 
concerned to refute it. Education has been the passion of the 
country; the country has been as profligate of its child life as of 
its other resources ; all have been disposed to have everything tried 
in the interests of the schools. So the sentimentalists have con- 
sented, the practicalists have doubted, and the multitude, with mixed 
feelings and conflicting emotions, has generally stood mute. 

What a first-class mechanic thinks of a first-class mechanical 
school may be illustrated by an actual Massachusetts case. Twenty- 
five years ago a hard-headed man who was for forty years the gen- 
eral manager of one of the largest manufactories of Massachusetts 
had an only son who had just finished the high school and wanted 
to go to Yale. As they lived in the western half of the state, he 
may perhaps have been excused for that. The father said, " No, 
Lester, I won't agree to it. If I let you go down there at your 
age and with what you know, those professors will spoil you. You 
come into the shop and I'll see if I can't train something into you 
that even professors can't ever get out." The boy went into the 
shop and worked with pipes and valves and machines and engines 
for three years. He was a facile youth and made himself 
acquainted with some of the officers and engineers of the Boston 
and Albany Railroad, which has later had the honor of being adopted 
by the " New York Central Lines." He studied and even tested 
locomotives. One summer his father said, " Now I think I have 
got you fixed so you can take care of yourself no matter what the 
professors say to you, and if you can get in at Yale you may go." 
He " got in " and graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School. 
That his father's course and confidence were justified is evidenced 
by the fact that he quickly became an instructor in mechanical 
engineering at Lehigh, and then a professor at the Michigan Col- 
lege of Agriculture ; that he built up a great department of mechan- 
ical engineering at the University of Illinois which is widely known, 
and became the first director of the first engineering experiment 
station in the country ; has for years been in charge of the govern- 
ment coal tests; and last winter responded to the urging of Yale 



88 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

that he come and take charge of the department of mechanical en- 
gineering at the very institution where his father feared professors 
might mislead a youth who was not very well grounded in me- 
chanics. What his father trained into him and what Yale trained 
into him, and no doubt the former quite as much as the latter, have 
made him both a workman and a teacher, and a sane and suc- 
cessful constructionist in what has come to be one of the great 
professions in the country. The point is that the skepticism of his 
father was justified, that his course was wise, that the boy became 
a skilled workman before he became a teacher, and a better teacher 
because he was a workman ; and because of the fact that he loves to 
work in a blouse as well as with a book he is widely influential in 
curing just such difficulties as those which caused his father's 
doubts. 

Now, passing from the doubts and difficulties and heroisms of 
pioneer work in industrial education in America, and profiting by 
the experiences of our own and other lands, let me try to point 
out what seems to me the essential groundwork of further plans 
which will be enduring and generally resultful. 

First, it will have to be frequently recalled that our political in- 
stitutions and the overwhelming feelings and tendencies of our 
people are democratic. Our democracy is trying to work its way 
out in our education and our industries as well as in our politics 
and our religion. There are not many aristocrats and there is 
not much room for aristocracy in our education. Schools must 
provide free opportunities to all the people and all the common 
interests of the country, and every one must have his open chance, 
and every public interest its equal recognition. It is the nation's 
aim and the people who hold the political power of the country 
expect to use that power to come as near as possible to that end. 
It may bear rather hard upon some theories, some interests, and 
some institutions, but that is only incidental and in the long run 
not important. 

Again, it will have to be often recalled that the industrial interests 
are more important than the intellectual, or professional, or cultural 
interests of the country. The well-being of the country and of the 
people require that more people work with their hands than only 
with their heads. This involves no disparagement of one kind of 
work or the other. It makes little difference to the community, 
and not so much to the individual, what kind of work one does so 
long as he does something which he does well. That is both pro- 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 89 

ductive and culturing: it adds to the prosperity of the country and 
the happiness and moral worth of the man. The point is that the 
country must offer quite as much opportunity to the child who 
would do one kind of work as to the child who would do another. 

This ideal can not be completely realized, but the ordinary think- 
ing and the public policy of the country must not hinder its realiza- 
tion. We must see the worth and the honor of skill of hand and 
tell the children of it. We must lessen the volume of common 
talk in the schools which makes children believe that they must do 
something for which they may have little taste and adaptation, in 
order to be successful and respected. This is not saying, by any 
means, that children whose parents have worked with their hands 
must themselves necessarily work with their hands. It is only 
saying that the American chance is to be a free and open one, and 
that it is not to be closed or even half way closed by the schools 
sending all the children on to classical or technical high schools and 
professional colleges on the one hand, or out into the world only 
half trained in the elements of an English education, prepared to 
do nothing efficiently, and without real ambition or clear thought 
about work and life, on the other hand. The child is to have his 
free chance ; the schools are to train him so that he will make his 
election freely and as rationally as may be; they certainly are not 
to prejudice his mind about it; and when he has made his free 
choice they are to help him become just as enthusiastic and efficient 
as possible. 

We must clearly differentiate not only between schools which 
work mainly with books and those which work mainly with me- 
chanical tools, but also between kinds of schools that are under- 
stood to be working largely with tools. Practically all of the in- 
dustrial and technical schools now operating in the United States 
are to be classified as manual training high schools ; they are giving 
a good and useful service; they train candidates for the higher 
technical schools or they make it a little easier for boys who would 
rather work with tools than with books ; they differ very little from 
our other secondary schools ; their admission requirements, think- 
ing processes, aims and results, are much the same; they are 
essentially college preparatory schools ; they do not direct children 
.towards the industrial life and they do not train workmen. And 
what the country and the people need is a better appreciation of 
all that, and a turn which will get us back into the middle of the 
road. We need an educational uplift to the work of the man who 



90 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

works with his hands. That is the best possible way, almost the 
only way, to give such an uplift to the man himself. And we not 
only need to give an educational uplift to craftsmanship and to the 
craftsman, but we need the help of the workman and of his better 
work in our education. We ought to realize better than we do the 
interdependent relations between our common education and our 
common industries, and we must go much further than we have 
yet gone to give the aid of our education to our industries if we 
would gain the reflex and stimulating influences which our indus- 
tries ought to bring to our education. 

This can be effectuated only through a system of industrial 
schools which shall be common throughout the country, which 
shall be differentiated from the manual training high schools, and 
which shall actually train millions of workmen. Labor does not 
and can not train workmen as the American workman has the in- 
herent right to be trained. The educational work of the country, 
as of all countries, including the training of workmen, is being 
centered upon the schools. The educational system of the country 
has discriminated against the work that is done by the hand, and 
therefore against the children of the people who work with their 
hands. There will be no cure for this until the work of the public 
elementary school is done more expeditiously, less fancifully, and 
more completely than it is now done, nor until those schools are 
supplemented by a system of schools which will provide real in- 
struction in the mechanical trades wherever there is a sufficient 
number of candidates in any one place to create a reasonable de- 
mand for it. 

There are educational and economic and utilitarian reasons enough 
why such a system of schools must be a component part of the 
common school system of the country. They must be so obvious to 
an educational assembly that I will not take much time to discuss 
them. All the strands are so warp and woof of the same fabric 
that there is no other way. The logic of the situation is aggressive 
and inexorable. We must go forward and do more, or we must 
go back and undo much that we have already done. Americans 
never retreat from educational positions once gained unless they 
find that those positions are illogical and untenable. Our present 
situations are neither illogical nor untenable. They are both logical 
and strategic. We have not wished to discriminate against hand- 
work or handworkmen. We have made rapid advances on the 
lines of least resistance. We will go forward to the universal 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING QI 

educational conquest of a wide field. It is a conspicuous field and 
the world is looking on ; it is being conquered by the self-conscious- 
ness and the political power of plain people, and wherever there is 
intelligence in the world it is beginning to take notice of that too. 

Beyond the reasons for developing a system of trades schools as 
a component part of the public school system, to which allusion 
has been made, there is a practical reason which is quite as im- 
perative, and I think quite as logical, as any of the other reasons. 
That is in the reasoning and the attitude of organized labor. It 
would be absurd to think that a general system of education in 
craftsmanship could be successfully inaugurated without the favor 
of the organized craftsmen of the country. It not only requires 
their favor but it also requires, in a very vital measure, their 
advice, guidance, and direction. That means that it must not only 
be interlaced with the common instruction of the country, but also 
that it must be upon a basis to which capitalists and manufacturers 
can not object on any logical or substantial ground. It must be 
upon territory in which all have equal rights, and upon a basis 
which is alike patriotic and educational. The only such basis is 
that of the common school. Separate industrial and tax-supported 
schools in absolute articulation with and under the same manage- 
ment as the public schools, was the plan enunciated by the New 
York State Education Department more than two years ago. It 
was without any conference with the labor leaders, but in the con- 
fidence that it was so logical and right that the interest of the 
working masses in their work, and particularly in their children, as 
well as their common honesty and patriotism, would impel them to 
accept it. 

That confidence has now been very completely realized. The 
attitude of organized labor has been taken with cautious deliberation 
and an intelligent appreciation of the importance and the difficulties 
of the matter involved. The subject has been much discussed in 
many labor unions and in labor journals. Last winter the New 
York State Department of Labor addressed the question: "Do 
you favor a public industrial or preparatory trade school which 
shall endeavor to reach boys and girls between fourteen and six- 
teen that now leave the schools in large numbers before gradua- 
tion? " to all of the labor unions in the state, and 1500 unions an- 
swered " yes," 349 "no," 23 a qualified " yes," and 5 a qualified 
" no." The whole matter has also had the very favorable consid- 
eration of the New York State Workingmen's Assembly, of the 



92 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

State Federation of Women's Clubs, and of many other influential 
and representative bodies. And the special committee — of which 
John Mitchell is chairman — of the American Federation of Labor, 
after considering it for a year and calling to their aid many men 
prominent in the educational work of the country, reported two 
weeks ago in favor of trades schools upon the basis of the public 
schools and with practically the same details of procedure as pro- 
mulgated by the New York State Education Department two years 
ago. The following extracts are taken from this report: 

" If the American workman is to maintain the high standard 
of efficiency, the boys and girls of the country must have an oppor- 
tunity to acquire educated hands and brains such as may enable 
them to earn a living in a self-selected vocation, and acquire an 
intelligent understanding of the duties of good citizenship." 

" We favor the establishment of schools in connection with the 
public school system, at which pupils between the ages of fourteen 
and sixteen may be taught the principles of the trades, not neces- 
sarily in separate buildings but in separate schools adapted to this 
particular education, and by competent and trained teachers." 

" The course of instruction in such a school should be English, 
mathematics, physics, chemistry, elementary mechanics, and draw- 
ing; the shop instruction for particular trades, and for each trade 
represented, the drawing, mathematics, mechanics, physical and 
biological science applicable to the trade, the history of that trade, 
and a sound system of economics, including and emphasizing the 
philosophy of collective bargaining." 

" In order to keep such schools in close touch with the trades, 
there should be local advisory boards, including representatives of 
the industries, employers, and organized labor." 

" The committee recommends that any technical education of 
the workers in trade and industry being a public necessity, it should 
not be a private but a public function, conducted by the public and 
the expense involved at public cost." 

" There is a strong reaction coming in general methods of edu- 
cation, and that growing feeling, which is gaining rapidly in strength, 
that the human element must be recognized, and can not be so dis- 
regarded as to make the future workers mere automatic machines." 

" Experience has shown that manual training school teachers 
without actual trade experience, do not and can not successfully 
solve this great problem, and that progress will necessarily be slow, 
as new teachers must be provided, a new set of textbooks wil! have 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 93 

to be written, and the subjects taught in a sympathetic and sys- 
tematic manner." 

The Executive Council of the Federation approved this report and 
recommended " that the committee be continued for at least another 
year, and that they cooperate with the Executive Council and all 
other bodies having for their purpose extending public industrial 
education." Organized labor in America is thus deliberately com- 
mitted to the training of workmen in cooperation with the public 
schools. 

The sagaciousness of this is worth remarking. It is the only 
hope of industrial education, efficiency and progress in America. 
Nothing can be accomplished without the sympathy of workmen. 
But workmen are dependent upon education. American workmen 
are alike apprehensive of corporate domination in educational plans 
and independent of charitable provision for training workmen. The 
apprenticeship system has fallen into disuse, and, aside from that, 
it could not now give the training, either on the literary or mechan- 
ical side, which is the necessary equipment of American workmen. 
The public school plan is the only one that is free from objections 
that are deemed valid by millions of very worthy men, or that is 
at all adequate for the overwhelming work in view. The industries 
will not be hampered for long in America by the rival claims of 
capital and labor. The plan which will mitigate them has to come 
and it was sagacious for labor to help it on. 

Now let me set forth the details of the New York plan with some 
definiteness, but as briefly as may be. 

We believe that very generally the courses in the elementary 
schools are too much prolonged; that the grades and the years are 
more than need be; that some unnecessary branches are included 
and that some others are too much attenuated; that there are often 
more grades of textbooks than are desirable in the same branch ; 
that there are often too much fanciful exploitation and illustration 
to be meaningful and helpful, and that in consequence it all wearies 
pupils and mystifies parents, and very commonly leads away from 
the environment in which the greater number of children will live, 
and away from the work they would naturally do. It results in too 
many misfits, and too often unfits for any work at all. 

As things are now going in our education, boys and girls often 
find that they can make as much money by their work if they drop 
out of the elementary schools at the end of the fifth or sixth grade 
as if they remain to the end of the eighth. As they have very 



94 NE W YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

commonly reached the age where the law no longer requires attend- 
ance upon school, by the time they are through the fifth or sixth 
grade, they do then drop out in very large numbers if they have 
opportunities to work. And as the department stores and the 
markets and the offices are looking for cheap labor and are not much 
concerned about the good of the child or the permanency of em- 
ployees, they offer such children work at a beggarly wage, and in 
a year or two will repeat the operation as to other children. The 
shops are not seeking children to train them into workmen. So 
the schools fall short in thorough work as to very many children, 
and the children go to work which is neither remunerative, perma- 
nent, nor helpful. In a few years they are upon the world with- 
out being able to do anything well enough to command employment 
which will support an individual, much less a family. And, worse 
than that, they are by that time commonly without the opportunity 
to learn something which will provide support and afford oppor- 
tunities. They have by that time grown too old in years to take up 
a child's work of learning to do something. It must be admitted 
that the same thing is essentially true if the child remains to the 
end of the elementary school or even goes through the high school, 
except that he may go to college or to a professional school. He 
does not command much more pay than he could get at the end of 
the sixth grade, and he has lost his opportunity as to nearly every- 
thing but a profession where the power to earn a living does not 
develop before perhaps the twenty-fifth or even the twenty-eighth 
year. 

Giildren can not all wait until the twenty-fifth year to begin to 
earn a living, and they ought not to lose their real opportunities in 
life because the scheme of the schools is set to send them to a higher 
literary, scientific, or professional school, or turn them into the 
world without any kind of efficiency. The schools are bound to 
recognize the fact that more skillful workmen who are happy in their 
work, rather than more professional men, are required ; that the 
genius of the country demands that all young people have their free 
choice of vocation and their open opportunity without hindrance by 
the plan of the schools ; and that a scheme of education which 
creates so many misfits, or forces so many into inefficiency or idle- 
ness, requires radical reformation. The schools must create a 
higher earning capacity at an earlier age. They must also create 
the power to make a rational choice of vocation before the oppor- 
tunity of such choice is practically taken away. 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 95 

We think the work of the elementary schools must not only be 
made shorter but stronger and more vital; that it must not only 
be made worth the while of all pupils to remain to the end of it, 
but must be finished enough earlier to make it easier to keep all 
pupils to the end of it. We think the work of the elementary 
schools must be capable of a more definite educational valuation, 
so that when children have finished it the public may believe that 
they have the knowledge and ability to do some definite things, and 
also a disposition and power to learn to do other things whether 
they ever go to another school or not. We think that the value of 
child life must be more regarded by the educational system, and that 
it must be assumed that the elementary schools will train the mind 
in elementary knowledge, so that if the child were never to go to 
another school where books were much employed, he would not be 
without the mental training which would enable him and dispose 
him to pursue further work, either mental or manual, without 
being seriously handicapped. We think that these schools should 
be substantially the same for all the children of the land, without 
reference to probable or possible careers, and that there should be 
no compromise about requiring the attendance of every child upon 
such a school or its reasonable equivalent. 

Therefore, we shall soon recommend an elementary course of 
study with but six grades and normally occupying six years instead 
of eight, in the confidence that it will be more rather than less 
educationally efficient. Pending the general discussion and agree- 
ment which are now moving to favorable conclusions, I am not at 
liberty to go into details, and there would be no advantage in doing 
so in a large assemblage. 

We would follow this great and universal elementary school sys- 
tem, so simplified and strengthened, with a system of secondary 
schools which for the present and in our state shall be distinctly 
separated at the very beginning into three great classes : first, the 
present literary high schools ; second, commercial or business schools, 
and third, general industrial or trade schools. 

The schools of the third branch are of immediate interest now. 
We propose that they occupy buildings that look like shops ; that 
they be taught by skilled workmen who can teach, rather than by 
teachers with a little mechanical skill ; that to a moderate extent 
they use books which are really germane to the work to be taught, 
but that their main instruments be machinery and tools ; and that 
they be much more shoppish than bookish. We propose that these 



g6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

schools be of two general classes, namely, general industrial schools 
training in general mechanics for those who will work in factories 
with machinery and many other workmen, and trades schools for 
those who will own their own tools and work essentially by them- 
selves. It is proposed that these schools be of a character which 
will be adaptable to almost any industrial conditions, and that 
wherever there are twenty or twenty-five boys or girls who want 
instruction in any vocation, they shall have it; that these schools 
shall be open day and evening to accommodate the circumstances 
of as many as may be ; that the school attendance and child labor 
laws shall always be consistent, and that the time of school attend- 
ance shall be extended until it may be believed that the great body 
of the children of the country will be prepared for some useful 
vocation, or at least until every child shall have had his fair chance 
with every other child to enter upon a career with real promise in it. 

We are not going to assume that the training of our industrial 
schools will make finished workmen any more than the training of 
our law schools makes finished lawyers. We are aiming at a surer 
fundamental English education for workmen and a mechanical 
training which will shorten the time required to make a good 
journeyman, and which in time will make a more intelligent and 
skillful mechanic than is promised in any other way. 

We hope to have the continuing and keen interest in each school 
of the craft allied to the work of that school. We want the ideals 
of craftsmanship to be high, and know that that can not be unless 
the most skilled workmen are interested in the school which is train- 
ing for their kind of work. The public can not divest its own duly 
chosen representatives of the management of the public schools, 
but we have arranged for a system of advisory committees con- 
sisting of workmen in the allied industries, to be appointed by the 
boards of education to guide the technical work of technical 
schools. 

We are not going to give ourselves much anxiety about the pro- 
fessions, except to keep putting up the requirements and making it 
harder to get in. We know that there will be no scarcity of pro- 
fessional men and women. Nor are we going to have solicitude 
about captains and managers, for we know that there will be no 
lack of them, and that there will be more capable captains and 
managers if we put our energy into training workmen and leave 
it to the best of them to work their way to the front. 

You are warranted in inquiring just how much has actually been 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 97 

accomplished. The law looking to such schools as a part of the 
public school system, authorizing the certificating of teachers and the 
approval of courses for them by the State Education Department, 
and assuring them the definite financial aid of the State, went into 
operation a year and a half ago. Before schools could actually be 
opened the sentiment in each city or large town had to concentrate, 
the funds had to be provided through the ordinary financial machin- 
ery, teachers had to be secured and buildings and equipment had to 
be arranged. But we have schools operating under this law in 
Albany, Buffalo, Gloversville, Hudson, New York, Rochester, Sche- 
nectady and Yonkers. The public opinion of the state is strongly 
in favor of the movement, and it seems very certain to gather in 
volume and force very rapidly. Another year will see the organiza- 
tion of many more schools. 

This is a matter of first concern to the United States, and doubt- 
less it is not too much to say that among the states it concerns 
Massachusetts and New York preeminently. When New York was 
only thinking about it, Massachusetts created her state commissions 
to deal with it, and those commissions gave it serious study and 
published their luminous reports. That work, in 1 905-1 906-1 907, 
placed all of the states, and New York in a special degree, under 
obligations to her. It at least accelerated our action and lighted 
our way. The fact that it seemed to me that at one or two points 
the commission had made a mistaken turn in laying out a pioneer 
road reduced the obligation not a whit. It is easier to criticize, or 
even correct, than it is to construct. And an error in itself is often 
illuminating. 

Speaking and publishing in 1907, I made this comment upon the 
attitude of Massachusetts : " The report of the two Massachusetts 
commissions are substantial contributions to the literature of the 
subject. It seems to me that a serious mistake is made in com- 
mitting the organization and administration of industrial schools to 
a special commission and not to the public school authorities of the 
state and of the subdivisions thereof ; and it seems to me also that 
the commission falls into fundamental error in looking to higher 
technical schools, teaching no one trade, to the exclusion of voca- 
tional trades schools. It is obviously because of the prevalent in- 
dustrial situation in the state." 

From the course of this address it is clear to you that the 
opinion then expressed has been confirmed rather than shaken, and 
from the course of events in Massachusetts it is clear to me 



^8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

that Massachusetts has gone back to the point of digression from 
the best route and has entered upon the building of a broader and 
better educational highway than would have been undertaken if the 
byway started upon had not led into a thicket. It reinforces my 
thinking, which grows stronger with the passing years, that the 
honest mistakes of men and women trying to accomplish desirable 
ends are often the means of wholly unexpected good. Without of 
course intending to express an opinion in commendation of one 
man or in opposition to another, I entertain no doubt that the con- 
solidation of organization, and the enlargement of the legal powers 
of the Massachusetts school system, which was occasioned by the 
division and the inevitable conflict of authority over this matter, will 
be of more advantage to the state than it yet realizes, and therefore 
of no little moment to educational progress in the nation. This 
consolidation and enlargement of function is peculiarly fortunate 
at this time because it is made to coordinate industrial education 
with all the other education of the state, while the whole is to 
be guided by serious students of industries as well as of education. 
And quite possibly it may turn out that the recent appointment of 
Dr David S. Snedden as State Commissioner of Education is the 
most important factor in the whole proceeding because of his rank 
as a scholar, his serious study of plans and processes in education, 
his experience as a teacher and writer, and his grasp of the great 
fact that education and vocation must be very vitally related if 
civilization is to be aggressive. 

But let us not underestimate the imperative character of our 
undertaking or the largeness of its difficulties. This undertaking 
is imperative to the balance and soundness of our education, to the 
prosperity of our manufactures, and to the moral health of our 
people. A system of education which, no matter what its intent, 
in fact results in a liberal education for a class and only a partial 
or an indifferent education for the mass, is not the normal and 
logical educational system of a democracy. Commercial prosperity 
and preeminence are more dependent upon the skill and industry of 
the mass than upon the scientific knowledge or the philosophic think- 
ing of a class. And the moral sense of the multitude is more de- 
pendent upon reducing the percentage of illiteracy to the vanishing 
point, as is done in many of the European nations, and upon train- 
ing all of the people to efficiency or at least up to their opportunities 
in some kind of work, as is also done in many European nations, 
than upon the gifts of millionaires or the benevolent purposes of 



THE ESSENTIAL GROUNDWORK OF INDUSTRIAL TRAINING 99 

the pure in heart. The thing will have to be worked out: let us 
hope that it will be worked out soon. 

The movement will not only have to be grounded upon founda- 
tions that will stand, but it will have to be projected upon lines 
that are very exact as well as very large. We are a sincere, en- 
thusiastic, hilarious, and indifferent people. We are as profligate 
in our education and as wasteful of the children of the mass, as we 
are indifferent about the natural resources of which we have lately 
heard so much. If we are to go on in our reckless disregard of 
things which are of the most worth, misapprehending the true basis 
of real culture, offering everything and enforcing nothing, evolving 
an educational system with more towers than foundations to it, we 
will surely come to a time when the sufficiency of democracy may 
be tested and the progress of the nation may be menaced and 
arrested by it. 

I do not believe that we shall go over a brink or come out against 
a stone wall, because I am sure we shall cure difficulties and take 
the correct turn in the road just before we get to such a place. 

Possibly these labor unions which many of us have doubted and 
some of us have feared, are to help us do it now. All great com- 
binations of either capital or labor do things at times which those 
who are not in the combination, and some who are in, dislike and 
disapprove. It is often so where the matter excepted to is without 
the sanction of the general authority, and it is sometimes so when 
it is with that sanction. In this regard honors are easy as between 
capital and labor. But none can be so blind as to fail to see the 
need and the desirability of labor being organized. No more can 
one who is intelligent fail to see that the labor organizations must 
be rational and just in order to be vital ; or one who is honest and a 
good citizen fail to wish them well. Now if, with its well known 
steadfastness and aggressiveness, the organized labor of the United 
States will insist upon reestablishing the balance in our education, 
and upon setting up a class of schools which will give an uplift to 
work, who can estimate the great service the workingmen will render 
to a nation which they love quite as sincerely as do any of us, and 
particularly, who can realize the great advantage they may gain to 
themselves and their children for many generations? Let us try to 
act in cooperation with them to have it so. That which improves 
work uplifts the workman more than his work. 

Democracy has its difficulties as well as its advantages. When 
we discover that our educational system is one-sided, and out of 



IOO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

balance, and turning out too many " professionals " and too few 
" industrials," we can not cure it by a speech as the German Em- 
peror could and did when he discovered the same thing in Germany 
fifteen years ago, but we will not doubt that there are forces in our 
democracy which are equal to its salvation. This is the land of 
opportunity: it is the land of sagacity, of resourcefulness, and of 
common honesty as well. 

Our Uncle Samuel is a hard-headed character. He may seem a 
little indifferent about some matters until he realizes the importance 
of them, and when he comes to know that something must be done 
it takes a little time to get his people together and agree about 
doing it. He dislikes to compel his own flesh and blood. With 
his people reason accomplishes when force fails. Things which 
have to be done are done. We have been dealing with a question 
which will have to be met. It is infinitely more fundamental than 
tariffs, and much more far-reaching than interstate trade or the 
greed of corporations. It goes to the balance, and strength, and 
moral sense, and permanency, and happiness of the nation. The 
educational people have brought it up and discussed it rather thor- 
oughly. The labor people are becoming much interested in it. 
The manufacturers, and the tradesmen, and the transporters, and 
the statesmen, and all the rest, will in time give their great support 
to the movement which seems to us so vitally important and which 
nromises so much. 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 

There is no officer in the United States so common as the school 
trustee or director. He is even more common than the justice of the 
peace or the police magistrate who settles petty controversies and 
punishes petty offenses. He is found not only in every city, town 
and village, but on almost every second or third mile of all the 
highways of the nation. In the cities and towns he is generally 
one of a board of education and acts with others in providing for 
and managing the schools for hundreds or thousands of children, 
but in the country he very commonly acts individually and alone as 
the representative of his neighbors in providing school accommoda- 
tions for the few children of his neighborhood. Under very differ- 
ent circumstances and confronted by widely differing burdens of 
responsibility, his functions are everywhere essentially the same. 
He must provide the necessary buildings and appliances, and employ 
and pay the proper teachers for the training of the children. 

He is not expected to teach. Indeed, it is not required that he 
be able to teach. He is not bound to supervise the teaching. That 
is provided for in other ways. But it is necessary that he be a man 
of ordinary business sagacity and that he manage the business 
affairs of the schools in the interests of the people who have author- 
ized him to represent them in doing so. This forbids his having any 
pecuniary or other personal interest in any of the business which he 
transacts. He must be wholly unselfish, and exercise ordinary 
sense, and show a genuine interest in universal education in all 
the transactions of his office. He must provide for as many schools, 
and for schools of as many grades, as the people authorize. He 
must employ the best teachers he can get for the compensation he is 
authorized to pay; he must treat such teachers justly; he must 
leave them free to teach in their own way, remembering that there 
are other officers whose duty it is to certify the qualifications of 
the teachers and supervise the teaching. He must advise with the 
officers who supervise the teaching, with reference to the employ- 
ment and continuance of teachers. He must do whatever he can 
to give opportunity to the most enlightened intelligence and the 
highest expectations of his constituents concerning their schools. 
He must not only do things that need to be done but he must also 

Address before a convention of school directors of Allegheny county, at 
Pittsburg, Pa., December u, 1909. 

[101] 



102 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

resist all selfish influences and all vicious propositions which are 
opposed to the best good of the schools. In a word, he must do 
all he can to express that sane and sound public opinion which is 
practically sure to be held by the majority of his people concerning 
the steady upbuilding of the schools. 

As common as the officer is who does all this in the United States, 
he is almost unknown in other lands. Not many other peoples 
choose their own representatives to manage their schools. From 
this it must not be inferred that there arc not many other lauds with 
many schools that are quite as good as ours. It must not be sus- 
pected that there are not other peoples as uniformly educated as our 
own. In fact, there are not a few nations in which all the people 
can read and write much more surely and uniformly than is true 
of the American people. The reason why the local school trustee 
or director is not common in other nations is because they are 
accustomed to minister their school affairs, like all of their other 
affairs, in autocratic ways, while we are accustomed to do it in 
democratic ways. Because of this the laws of nearly all the other 
nations make no provision for local school officers to manage the 
schools. They appoint national ministers of education, or possibly 
national boards, who arrange and direct all the affairs of their 
schools from a central office in the national capital. In this office 
it is ordered how all the schoolhouses shall be provided : here the 
teachers are appointed, and very often they are appointed for life 
and become permanent officers of the government ; and here it is 
determined just what shall be taught, and when, and just what 
methods of teaching shall be employed. Every detail of the schools 
is fixed by the central government, and the people of a city, town 
or village have little or nothing to say about it. This way of doing 
things has in some cases provided very excellent systems of schools ; 
in fact, better systems than the people would have established them- 
selves. It avoids some difficulties and attains many excellent re- 
sults which, in view of the economic conditions and the political 
thinking and institutions of other lands, could not be assured in any 
other way. But, for reasons which we understand very well, it 
would not work in this country. 

The office of superintendent of schools is pretty nearly an Amer- 
ican creation. In other lands the schools are much less complicated 
in their organization and their operations, not only on the side of 
their business affairs but also in relation to their courses of study 
and the teaching. The teachers generallv have a life tenure. Com- 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT 103 

monly they are paid by the government, and often they have a pen- 
sion when they can teach no longer. Naturally enough, they follow 
in every detail the minute directions of the national minister of 
education. Often there are inspectors who visit the schools and 
report upon them to the minister, but a city or county superintend- 
ent who visits the schools regularly and sympathetically, criticises 
and encourages the teachers, looks after the adaptation of teachers 
to particular schools or grades of work, and stands between the 
board of education, or the trustees, and the teachers, while he 
works for educational uniformity and pedagogical efficiency, is 
practically unknown. 

The same thing distinguishes the administration of American 
and foreign colleges. All American colleges have a board of trus- 
tees, while such a board is practically unknown in foreign colleges. 
There every immediate activity of the college is directed by the 
faculty. The colleges are essentially under government control 
which is regulated by the national Legislature and exercised by 
the minister of education, but for all practical and ordinary purposes 
the affairs of the college are managed by the faculty. Indeed the 
office of college president — an executive officer standing between 
the board of trustees and the faculty, and striving for cooperative 
efficiency — is lacking. A professor in a foreign college or uni- 
versity would look with apprehension upon an innovation which 
would subject any interest or policy of the institution to the deter- 
mination of any authority but the faculty or of any man but a 
" scholar." 

So it appears that in other countries the educational system, from 
top to bottom, is almost exclusively under the management of pro- 
fessional teachers, while in this country it is, from the bottom to 
the top, under the joint management of professional teachers, pro- 
fessional executive and administrative officers, and laymen chosen 
by and representing the people who support it or the institutions 
which form the parts of it. 

Of course there is a reason for this, and the reason is in our 
democracy. The governments or the monarchs of other countries 
have formed and are imposing upon their people such educational 
systems as the governments or the monarchs think well for their 
people. We are evolving such an educational system as we think 
good for ourselves. Their way is easier than our way, and it must 
be admitted that often it is more efficient than our way, because 
their people know no other way. Very often their way has been 



104 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

a wise and good and resultful way. It has accomplished many very 
definite and very desirable ends which our way has not yet accom- 
plished. Nevertheless we believe that their way is not capable of 
accomplishing all of the ends, nor all of the absolutely vital ends, 
for which we are striving. We think that if an educational system 
is to afford every one his equal chance, or is to do the most that 
it is desirable that such a system shall do for a people, it must be 
evolved out of their free intelligence and capacity, and must readily 
respond to their outlook and intellectual progress, and that this can 
not be so unless from the beginning to the end of it the popular in- 
telligence and sentiment have a very large measure of free control 
over it. We say without hesitation that it is better that the people 
control their own schools, even though they fail at some points, than 
that the schools be controlled by some authority independent of the 
people which might do some things better than they are done under 
popular control. We say that experience has already established 
the soundness of our contention, and that results have already been 
attained which in their fullness and their further promise are sur- 
prising even to ourselves. 

We have gained confidence through our doing. It was not all 
thought out at the beginning. When we became independent states, 
and even through the eighty years that the states were coalescing 
into a nation with substantial cohesiveness about it, we had no 
popular or confident educational plan. Our purposes, our theories, 
our methods of procedure, had to be worked out through our ex- 
periences. One step had to be taken before we could anticipate 
the next. Through all of that time our education moved with con- 
siderable sluggishness and difficulty. The elementary schools were 
dissociated and unsystematic, often undisciplined and weak. The 
secondary schools had no relations with the elementary schools and 
exercised very limited functions. Many of them gave much aid 
to the culture of circumscribed communities, and sent a few boys to 
colleges that were no broader and only a little stronger than them- 
selves. There was no lack of interest, but evolution was slow be- 
cause government hesitated at the exercise of authority in Amer- 
ica, and because the political understanding and power of the com- 
mon people had not become firmly established. But as we have 
taken one step after another and found that we did not fall, we 
have come to believe in our own educational capacity and we have 
gone on shaping an educational system which in the opportunities 
that it offers to all the people undoubtedly surpasses the other edu- 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT • 105 

cational systems of the world. All manner of educational oppor- 
tunity for all manner of people, and a free choice of opportunity 
without influence or hindrance, has come to be the national passion 
of the United States. And it has come because no part of it — so 
much and no more — was impressed upon us by some external 
authority, and because we found that we had the opportunity and 
went on managing the business for ourselves. A community, a 
state, or a nation, quite as much as an individual, likes to see the 
results of its own handiwork. A whole people, no less than an 
individual, grows in strength and power through the doing of what 
it does for its advancement. 

I have had occasion to point out in another place the great in- 
fluence of the boards of trustees in bringing large revenues to the 
better type of American colleges and universities. The colleges and 
universities of other lands have no such munificent revenues. It is 
because our colleges have within their own organization a board 
of laymen who are responsible for the financial management and 
who shape the institutions to the needs and the wishes of their 
constituencies. In other words, the American colleges have within 
themselves the most powerful instrument of their own self-expan- 
sion. If it is an endowed college the high character of the trustees 
appeals to people who are wondering what ought to be done with 
their money, either now or when they die. The unselfishness of the 
trustees gives point to their appeal for aid to accomplish definite 
things. These officers stimulate giving as teachers are not able to 
do. It is no less so with the state universities. The people and the 
legislatures have confidence in the university boards they have 
created. They often think, and often unjustly, that teachers are 
only theorists and impracticables, but such charges, or excuses, do 
not lie against the hard-headed laymen who constitute the boards 
of trustees. The lay influences associated with American colleges 
and universities, acting in cooperation with the professional facul- 
ties, are bringing them to the very front rank of world institutions 
of the higher learning. It may yet develop them into a class by 
themselves. 

This lay influence, representing and expressing the feelings of the 
body of the people, is no less potent in the elementary and the 
secondary schools than in the colleges and universities. It con- 
stantly expresses the difference between schools created by the 
people for their own uses and upbuilding, and schools imposed upon 
the people by a government more or less remote, because that gov- 



IOG NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

eminent is benevolent enough to be interested in them or is sagacious 
enough to want to convert them into instruments of national 
strength. It is this which causes the school tax to be borne more 
cheerfully than any other tax, even though it be the largest. Indeed 
it is this which causes the school tax to be borne with an absolute 
enthusiasm that surprises all the other nations of the world. 

I am bound to say also that it makes the schools better. It 
would be absurd to indulge in any reflections upon scholarship, no 
matter how exclusive it may be. If one has given his life to re- 
search in a new field, no matter how narrow, he may have acted 
wisely and well. If he can go beyond the outposts of world knowl- 
edge and ascertain a single scientific truth that adds to the exact in- 
formation of the world, he will put the world under obligations to 
him. Even a human life may not be too high a price to pay for 
such a new truth. But such work and such heroisms as that are 
individual. No such exclusiveness, uncertainty, mystery, and sacri- 
fice as they involve are inherent or usual in the elementary, second- 
ary, or collegiate schools of the people. 

The schools that are of most worth to a self-conscious people, 
trying to afford the utmost of opportunity to every one, will respond 
to their free impulses. Their public opinion will not often limp 
or go astray. It will be compounded out of the circumstances, the 
work, the reading, the discussions of laborers, craftsmen, manu- 
facturers, merchants, lawyers, physicians, editors, preachers, teach- 
ers, and all the rest ; it will be reached with pretty full information 
of the thinking and the doings of other people in all parts of the 
world and in all generations ; it will be limited and guided by the 
moral sense which seldom fails in the mass ; and it will be an alto- 
gether sufficient basis for the ordinary schools. Whatever matured 
public opinion wants in the way of schools, it may well have. It is 
a safer guide and a surer support than the reasoning of any one 
class, even though that class be composed of teachers. Let this not 
be taken as a flippant and unworthy implication. There is no better 
guild than that which the teachers form. No other class works 
more conscientiously or with more self-sacrifice for self-improve- 
ment and the good of others. None is so unappreciated or so under- 
paid. Far be it from me to seem to fall short in the expression of 
the esteem in which I hold them. But, like all other people, they are 
much influenced by their life and their work. Too many of them 
see but one phase of life and often it is a narrow one. Too many 
of them live very exclusively with immature minds, and deal with 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT IO7 

routine to an extent which is likely to be intellectually warping if 
not dwarfing. Nevertheless their opinions have opportunity ; they 
enter into the making of public opinion. If the teacher mingles 
with the people as well as works in the school ; if he is a free, re- 
ceptive, juicy and generous character as well as an exact and con- 
scientious one, he has a very large part in forming public opinion 
concerning the schools. A board of education composed of laymen 
has a hard time differing with such an one about what, or how, 
things shall be done in the schools. As to the laying out of courses, 
the making of schedules, and the methods of teaching, the teacher 
is necessarily and properly almost supreme. So there is no difficulty 
at all if the teachers are reasonably capable and well disposed, and 
the directors or trustees are honest. If they are not, the teacher 
should be discontinued or the trustee locked up. If they are, they 
settle details in discussion, giving and taking, and influencing each 
other, until they act together in ways that vitally adapt the school to 
the needs of the people to whom it ministers. That makes the 
teacher a stronger and more rational teacher and the school a 
broader and more useful school, than would be without this organic 
association with the world. 

There is quite as much danger of trustees overreaching as of 
teachers falling short. Sometimes a school trustee in the country 
has the hallucination that he owns the school and is to operate it 
to his own personal advantage rather than as the representative of 
his neighbors and for the equal good of all ; but there are not many 
such. I have seen people come into a city board of education and 
into the board of trustees of a great university with the very mani- 
fest purpose of seeing what they could get out of it for themselves ; 
but there are relatively very few of these, and such as I have seen 
have come to grief. Such people defeat their own ends. Such mat- 
ters ordinarily regulate themselves. 

There is possibly more danger that the lay officers, and some- 
times the teachers, of the school system will concoct sentimental un- 
dertakings which have no very substantial basis. Oftener they will 
yield to the importunity of sentimental people in the community 
who want to foist something new upon the schools. It is all honest 
enough. When it is useless or impracticable, the main trouble with 
it is that it is sincere. It is hard to fight honest people about school 
policies; it is particularly hard for men to oppose women senti- 
mentalists, and especially so when they have a whole woman's club 
united to propagate one sentiment. One of the best grounds for 



IOS NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

having women in school boards is that they are valiant in opposing 
women sentimentalists outside of school boards. In this way or in 
some other way the difficulty regulates itself in the course of time. 
The schools can not do everything, not even every good thing. In 
my opinion they might better undertake less than they do, and ac- 
complish what they assume more definitely and completely than 
they do. The evidences are not lacking that the public opinion of 
the country is tending towards that conclusion. 

But, again, all of these things regulate themselves in the course 
of time. The distinctly representative character of the American 
school system keeps it in equilibrium and in close association with 
the life of the republic. The popular administration of it makes 
it expressive of the popular thinking and feeling beyond any other 
national system of education. The professional leadership of it 
steadily grows in scholarship and solidity. The two balance each 
other to the advantage of both and to the good of all. And the 
greatest good results in the communities where the personnel of 
each is such that each may thoroughly respect the other. 

It is not to be denied that the local and popular, the extreme 
democratic and decentralized, support and administration of our 
educational system has often worked to the disadvantage of com- 
munities which were poor in pocket or lacking in educational initia- 
tive and energy. With one accord we would say that it is even 
better so than that central school authority shall be beyond the 
influence and control of the people. But we see more clearly than 
we used to many things that need to be done, and we realize as 
never before that these things will not be done save under general 
laws enforced by general authority. We understand the advantages 
of cooperation better than we used to and we are not so solicitous 
about the rule of usurpers as we once were. We know how to use 
political power more effectually than our fathers did, and it makes 
us less apprehensive than they were about delegating the authority to 
do necessary things. Accordingly, the extreme individualism of 
towns is giving way even in the most conservative of states. And 
all the states which must necessarily exercise the sovereign author- 
ity over our tax-supported educational system, and must create and 
regulate our educational corporations, like all other corporations, 
are more and more disposed to assure uniform excellencies in the 
educational system, without lessening the popular control in all 
sections where popular educational sentiment is rational and at all 
aggressive. 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT IO9 

It is not too much to say that New York has in this regard differed 
decisively from all the other states. Her educational policies grew 
out of her history, out of the early struggles and the later fusion 
of English autocracy and Dutch democracy, which she inherited 
from the successes of the English royalists and the Dutch revolu- 
tionists in the mother countries. Those policies were not made in 
fear of all government save local and primary government, as in 
New England. Neither were they made in ignorance of the rights 
of freemen nor in disregard of the new-born freedom of local initia- 
tive and opportunity which were quite as zealous and forceful in 
New York as in other parts of the country. There has never been 
any appreciable dissent in the state from these well established 
educational policies. Indeed, they have gathered popular and legal 
support, and they have grown in definiteness and firmness with the 
advances in population and the increasing strength and conspicuity 
of the state. 

With the necessary reservation that in the last analysis any fun- 
damental question may be settled in the Legislature, she has created 
a state educational administration and delegated to it ample liberty 
to legislate upon future educational policies along lines not incon- 
sistent with the law and usage of the state, and with sufficient au- 
thority to assure the execution of the policies of the state touching 
every manner of educational activity about which the general opinion 
of the state is concerned. Requiring without hesitation that so 
much be done in the interests of education in every part of the 
state, it stimulates and aids every community to do just as much 
more as its intelligence and its means will suggest. 

It does this upon both the material and the professional sides of 
the schools, and not only of the schools but also of all the culturing 
agencies, all the scientific or philosophical institutions, and all the 
organized professions which seek some share in the public com- 
mendation or some right in the public authority, whenever their 
intellectual and moral standards enter into the weal or the woe of 
the state. 

For example, New York undertakes to prevent the use of an 
unsanitary schoolhouse, but does not discourage as elaborate and 
elegant a schoolhouse as any community will erect. She requires 
that at least so much be taught in the schools, and encourages the 
teaching of as much more as any community will support. She 
allows no one to teach in any public school who has not earned the 
right to do so in regular courses in approved schools or in written 



IIO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

examinations set and rated by the State Education Department, but 
she never meddles about the employment of teachers upon whom 
in an entirely impersonal way she has set the mark of her appro- 
bation. She does not admit that all districts will at all times main- 
tain suitable schools without more inspection and regulation than 
they will establish for themselves, but so long as districts do, and 
she can give their procedure the sign of her approbation, she with- 
holds directions and proffers only the aid which by that time they 
ordinarily desire. She retains the right of reasonable control over 
all institutions which derive their corporate existence from her, but 
when their life is of a character which helps her, she leaves them to 
themselves to do as much better as they can. She controls the gate- 
ways to all the professions, but she leaves the professional life of 
the state very much to its own courses and its own discipline. Ex- 
ercising a measure of general control which is not equalled in any 
other state, she never impedes the right of initiative or interdicts 
local control, so long as the motives of the local managers are not 
clearly of a character which demand her censure rather than her 
approbation or her help. She is in no sense a theorist. She is 
intensely practical. But she does not intend to be unscientific. She 
believes in adapting educational facilities to people ; that this must 
be done through the people themselves ; and that where this is done 
the most freely the schools will be the best and the people will be 
most progressed through the doing of it. 

All of the states are necessarily tending with more or less de- 
cisiveness towards this attitude. This movement is not so much 
accelerated by the men of the schools as by the people themselves. 
It is the lay factors in our civilization who are doing it for their 
own protection and their own progress, rather than the professional 
factors who are doing it for their own aggrandizement. It is the 
inevitable accompaniment, or perhaps the forerunner, of real pro- 
gress in growing populations with steadily enlarging educational 
and professional needs. And New York is rather happy in the 
fact that she is in such a situation and not obliged to contend for it 
now ; that she is not forced to discard the limping theories of a cen- 
tury in order to be in company with the overwhelming trend of our 
American life and our national institutions. 

But it is not very important outside of the state what that state 
has done, neither is the division of responsibility between the 
officers of the state and those who are local, of overwhelming im- 
portance, because we have the habit in the United States of grad- 



THE LAY INFLUENCE IN SCHOOL MANAGEMENT III 

ually doing what needs to be done in the interest of the schools. 
But it is important that we never forget that the schools are the 
schools of the people, and that the well-being of the schools and the 
good of the people require that they be kept in close and continuous 
association. It is vital that laymen who are associated with pro- 
fessional superintendents and teachers in the management of the 
schools shall concede to such professional men and women a free 
hand in shaping and directing activities of the schools which bear 
upon instruction, and it is just as vital that superintendents and 
teachers shall concede to the laymen who are chosen by the people 
to manage their schools that freedom and responsibility which must 
keep schools in touch with the people they are expected to serve and 
the situations they are bound to aid. 

It is this distribution of function, and this balancing of responsi- 
bility, between the people and the teachers and between the state 
and the town or the district, which is the most distinguishing fea- 
ture of the American system of education. To disturb this equilib- 
rium would be to menace the brightest jewel in our crown. It is 
the lay influence which promises every child his chance without 
lessening the opportunities of professional scholarship. 



NEW YORK COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF 

EDUCATION 

It is time to initiate, if possible, a serious discussion of the rela- 
tions which our colleges, using the term freely for convenience and 
referring to all the higher institutions of learning, do sustain 
and ought to sustain to each other, to the people of the state, and 
to the state system of education. There should be a freer op- 
portunity to go to college; and the college influence should reach 
down into the secondary and the elementary schools, and into all 
the affairs of the people, more freely and unselfishly than it does. 
Even though this general statement is commonly admitted, as very 
likely it will be, it is necessary not only to examine the present 
situation somewhat in detail, but also to look into the history out 
of which the situation has been evolved, in order to realize what 
is needed and how much it is needed, and in order to discuss the 
steps which may possibly attain the desired ends. And it may as 
well be said at the outset that I have not come, and do not expect 
in this paper to come, to any definite or unalterable conclusions a? 
to particular policies which the state ought to adopt. There are 
so many great interests involved ; there are so many strong men and 
women concerned, and new steps are so very difficult and may be so 
far-reaching, that nothing more can be expected than that I shall 
open the subject, point out some of the facts, try to adduce 
some of the reasoning which bears upon it, and ask that it may 
have unprejudiced consideration by the State Board of Regents, by 
the college officers and boards and faculties and graduates, and by 
the educational associations, the more popular assemblages, and the 
newspaper press of the state. Then public opinion ought to take 
form, and more liberal and positive and fruitful educational policies, 
which will push their way into the future history of the state, ought 
to result. 

It is not too much to say that of all the original 13 states, New 
York tried at least as hard as any other to erect a collegiate sys- 
tem which would extend liberal learning and work to the advan- 
tage of its intellectual affairs. But while the system or organiza- 
tion created was framed by the leading men in the early history of 

Written as the Commissioner's special theme for the Annual Report of 
the State Education Department for the year 1909. 

[112] 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 113, 

tlie state, wlio were also statesmen of the very first rank in the na- 
tion, and while the organization they created has never been logically 
attacked, it must be admitted that the outworking of the scheme has 
been marked by much controversy so far as colleges have been con- 
cerned. For many years, certainly for more than half a century of 
the early history of the state, the State Board of Regents, set to 
represent the state in the upbuilding of its colleges, did not get on 
well with the separate colleges which the state had created. It 
might quite as well be put the other way and said that the colleges 
did not get on well with the Board of Regents. Nor is it too much 
to add that this purpose to have the college influence permeate the 
lower schools and all the affairs of the state has been in a very con- 
siderable measure thwarted by the unfortunate separateness in the 
administration of the state's educational activities and by the preju- 
diced discussion of the state's educational policies which began im- 
mediately after the creation of the " University of the State of 
New York " by the Legislature, or as soon as the Board of Regents 
was sharply resisted when it moved to develop, under its auspices, 
a state system of elementary schools. The strain continued until 
the educational unification act of 1904. That act has been accepted 
generally and cordially, and with the elimination of the separateness 
in educational administration it is not too much to hope that the 
persistent prejudice or one-sided point of view in the discussion of 
educational policy may disappear. 

It may or it may not be profitable to discuss old controversies. 
That depends upon the spirit and the purpose. In this case it is 
necessary if we are to have any intelligent discussion at all. To 
ignore them is to admit that there is a skeleton in one of our old 
closets which we dare not investigate. The Board of Regents and 
the University of the State of New York have become fixed in the 
Constitution of the state and are here to stay. They were incor- 
porated in the Constitution by the convention and by the people 
after no years of trial. It is not for any one of us to say that this 
fundamental situation was not wisely arranged. It is for us to ac- 
cept the situation. Accepting it without cavil or reservation, we 
are bound to know what it was that put a strain upon the relations 
of this Board with the colleges of the state, which has continued 
even to our time, and what it is that has caused such a break be- 
tween the state and its colleges and also between the colleges and 
the lower schools. Knowing what the cause is, we are bound to 
remove it. We are old enough and strong enough to go about it 



114 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

without vituperation or continuing prejudice. And we ought to 
see that while every interest of the state is involved the college 
interests have at least as much at stake as any other interests. 

The only college in the state established by royal charter broke 
down with the Revolution. It broke down not only because New 
York was the seat of war, but because the royal aims that had 
entered into it were frustrated by independence. The act reviving 
it was passed at the first session of the Legislature after the 
war. It not only revived King's College and changed its name to 
Columbia, but it created " The Regents of the University of the 
State of New York." This Board was charged with the adminis- 
tration of the resurrected college. The men who petitioned for the 
new charter were all prominent men and many of them were promi- 
nent officers of the state. The governor, secretary of state, treas- 
urer, and attorney general were among them. They represented 
to the Legislature that many parts of the old charter " are in- 
consistent with that liberality and that civil and religious freedom 
which our present happy Constitution points out," and prayed for 
an enlargement of the privileges of the college " so as to render it 
the mother of an university to be established within this state." 
The Legislature responded to the spirit and purpose of the petition. 
The intent to create a university, not for the city, nor for any ex- 
clusive class, but of the state, is too clear to be mistaken. The 
members of the Board were representative of the several sections 
of the state. The expectation was to have a considerable number 
of both schools and colleges created and bound together in a state 
university, and the Board of Regents was empowered to found such 
colleges " in such parts of the state as may seem expedient to them," 
and to do what was necessary to maintain and administer them. 
Such schools and colleges were ""' at all times to be deemed a part 
of the University." The " University " was the " University of the 
State of New York " and invested with full powers over Columbia 
College and also all authority to establish both colleges and 
academies and to develop and maintain the " University of the State 
of New York," which was to be comprised of all the colleges and 
academies of the state. And it should be borne in mind that at a 
time when there were few elementary schools, either public or 
private, and no public high schools, the " schools " here referred to 
were academies which would feed the colleges. The " schools " 
were to be pushed down from the colleges, not to spring from the 
ground up to them. Democracy had then made but little headway 
in education. 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 115 

This scheme failed almost at once so far as the government of 
Columbia College was concerned, because the Regents lived too 
far from the college. There may have been other reasons to make 
it unworkable. But the failure should not obscure our vision as to 
the thought of the founders of the state. They were clearly 
trying to accomplish an organization of colleges and academies 
in the state. It was to be an organization authorized, aided, and 
controlled by the state. The governor of the state was made 
chancellor, and the lieutenant governor, vice chancellor, of this 
first Board, and so of Columbia College. Ecclesiastical differences 
were attempted to be harmonized by inviting each of the religious 
denominations to elect one Regent. The organization was to be 
all-inclusive. The " fellows, professors, or tutors " of each col- 
lege were constituted Regents to the extent of being authorized to 
vote upon the affairs of their respective colleges. That part of the 
scheme was primitive and inexperienced, but the central thought is 
plain enough and the general plan was excellent. Democracy was 
taking its early, unsteady steps in New York education, but it had 
a goal, was getting some confidence, and was moving towards the 
realization of a splendid purpose, as no other state undertook to 
move. 

Even in six months another act had to be passed. It moved in 
the wrong direction: it sought to assure the transaction of busi- 
ness by reducing the number required for a quorum to eight and 
by creating 33 more Regents. The Board was coming to be some- 
thing like a general assembly of the state if all the members at- 
tended, and the business to be managed was of a kind which an as- 
sembly can not handle. But whatever else this act did, it brought 
into the Board John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. In passing it 
is interesting to note that the name of Aaron Burr appeared in 
the first draft of the bill, but that before the bill was matured the 
name of Morgan Lewis was substituted for that of Burr. It was 
provided that the annual meetings of the Board should be held 
" at the time and place where the Legislature shall first be con- 
vened after the first Monday of July in every year, and that at 
every such meeting the acts and proceedings of the Regents of said 
LTniversity shall be reported and examined." 

This second act provided for an advance of 2552 pounds sterling 
to Columbia College, for which " the Regents shall be accountable 
out of the funds of Columbia College." It is both pathetic and 
amusing to read the regrets of the Regents on April 4th of the 



Il6 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

next year that " the regency " was without funds available to 
Columbia College which would enable them " to offer such a salary 
as will be an inducement to a respectable character to accept tlie 
office of president/' and it is gratifying to know that the difficulty 
was not to be an everlasting one. 

The second act of the Legislature went no further than the first 
to make a workable plan, except that it did bring into the Board of 
Regents the men who could make such a plan. That certainly was 
much. In January 1787, in the face of a breakdown, the Board of 
Regents appointed a committee " to consider measures necessary to 
carry into effect the views of the Legislature with respect to the 
University and particularly with respect to Columbia College." 
Jay and Hamilton were both members of this committee, and there 
is sufficient reason for thinking that Hamilton drew the report. 
After noting objections to certain matters of form in the legisla- 
tive acts and excusing them on account of " the multiplicity of 
business which employed the attention of the Legislature during 
the first session after the peace," the report proceeds to matters of 
substance. Indeed, the following two paragraphs of this report are 
exceedingly substantial : 

" But your committee are of opinion that to render the University 
beneficial according to the liberal views of the Legislature, altera- 
tions will also be necessary in the substance of its Constitution. At 
present, the Regents are the only body corporate for literary pur- 
poses. In them are not only the funds, but the government and 
direction of every college are exclusively vested, while from their 
dispersed situation, it must be out of their power to bestow all the 
care and attention which are peculiarly necessary for the well-being 
and prosperity of such institutions. Experience has already shown 
that Regents living remote from each other can not with any con- 
venience form a board for business. The remedy adopted by the 
second act was to reduce the quorum to a small number; but thus 
placing the rights of every college in the hands of a few individuals, 
your committee have reason to believe, excited jealousy and dis- 
satisfaction, when the interests of literature require that all should 
be united. These reasons, without entering into a more full dis- 
cussion, your committee conceive to ground their opinion that each 
respective college ought to be intrusted to a distinct corporation, 
with competent powers and privileges, under such subordination 
to the Regents as shall be thought wise and salutary. 

" Your committee are of opinion that liberal protection and en- 
couragement ought to be given to academies for the instructionof 
youth in the languages and useful knowledge; these academies, 
though under the grade of colleges, are highly beneficial, but owing 
their establishment to private benevolences, labor under disadvan- 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 117 

tages which ought to be removed; their property can only be ef- 
fectually preserved and secured by vesting them in incorporated 
trustees. This act of justice to the benefactors and to the county 
town wherein any such institution may have taken place, by fixing 
a permanent superintendence, would greatly contribute to the in- 
troduction of able teachers and the preservation of the morals of 
the students as well as their progress in learning. Your committee 
also conceive that privileges may be granted to such academies, 
which will render them more respectable, and be a strong incitement 
to emulation and diligence both in the teachers and scholars." 

In view of the fact that the leading men in the Board of Regents 
were almost without exception leading men in the Legislature, it 
is not strange that as soon as this report was adopted by the Regents 
it was quickly put into statutory form and enacted by the Legis- 
lature. This act made a board of 21 Regents — the governor and 
lieutenant governor, and 19 elected by the Legislature. It is the 
carefully and ably framed original and general law constituting the 
Board of Regents the supreme authority upon higher education in 
New York from the state's point of view, and, except as the prog- 
ress of events and the changes in circumstances have made some 
of its provisions obsolete, and except as the educational unification 
act of 1904 wrought some modifications in the interest of educa- 
tional solidarity, it has never been impaired and is the law today. 
It created a separate board of trustees for the " College of the 
Province of New York," and directed that it should thence be 
called " Columbia College," and it provided for a similar board in 
the case of all colleges and schools thereafter established. It also 
named the separate board of trustees of Columbia College and trans- 
ferred Hamilton from the Board of Regents to the college board. 
It divested the Board of Regents of the direct charge of all insti- 
tutions. But it established the "University of the State of New 
York " upon a firmer footing than before, and it renewed and con- 
firmed and enlarged the powers of the Board of Regents of that 
University. It empowered that Board to grant educational charters, 
and directed all citizens desiring to form an educational institution 
to apply to the Regents for incorporation. And while the Legisla- 
ture has occasionally since then ignored this act and given charters 
direct, it must be said that such instances have been few and ex- 
ceptional, and in recent years have ceased altogether. The 'settled 
practice now is to deal with no such matters in the Legislature, and 
manifestly that is the only sound practice. This act of 1787 con- 
ferred upon the Regents of the University not only the power to 



Il8 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

create educational corporations but also large supervisory powers 
over all incorporated educational institutions. They were required 
to visit and inspect them, and report to the Legislature as to their 
state and progress. They were authorized to hold property, and 
administer funds, and make rules, and do whatever might need to 
be done to make institutions efficient and to advance sound learning 
throughout the state. And this " University of the State of New 
York " and this " Board of Regents " of such University have been 
repeatedly broadened and strengthened by legislation, and in 1894 
were incorporated and established in the state Constitution. 

The writer was not embarrassed by any old notions or any former 
expressions, and he was not in need of acquiring any new or en- 
larged regard for this scheme or this Board when, in addition to 
other duties, he became charged with executing its decrees as the 
executive officer of the University of the State of New York, in 
1904. He has nothing but veneration for an educational scheme 
conceived as this one was, and which has endured since " the first 
session after ihe peace." He has always though: the scheme an 
admirable one. He has long had a keen appreciation of the sig- 
nificance and importance of the lay influence in education; he has 
realized its vital relation to American education ; and for many 
years he has cherished the good opinion of the eminent men of 
New York who have constituted this most dignified and influential 
board of public education in the country. 

It is true there has been some confusion of mind over the title 
" The University of the State of New York " in view of the very 
common use to which the term " university " has been put since 
the State of New York laid hands upon it. Doubtless our use 
of it has prejudiced the organization which bears it in the minds 
of people who are accustomed to associate the term exclusively 
with teaching or investigating institutions. Probably some have 
even assumed that New York used the term in a false or mislead- 
ing, or at least in an overambitious and unwarranted "way. There 
has been no sufficient reason for any of this, and no ground what- 
ever for the most of it. The title was thoughtfully and logically 
chosen, and with pride we may always point to the fact that no 
state has stood out against and prohibited by law the use of high 
sounding educational names for low grade institutions as New York 
has from the very beginning. Indeed, that purpose was one of the 
large factors which entered into the creation of the " University 
of the State of New York " and that purpose has been exemplified 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION II9 

by that " University " from " the first session after the peace " 
until now. 

In 1784 there was not an institution in the United States with 
the spirit, the philosophic basis, or the faculties of a university, as 
the term was then or is now understood. It can hardly be said that 
there was one that claimed the name, and if there was one that 
did it had no good right to it. The plan that reestablished the one 
college of the State of New York, which had been laid low by the 
fierce fires of the Revolution; that provided for establishing other 
colleges and academies of every kind and in all parts of the state, 
and that bound them all together in a supervisory university, was 
the bold, strong conception of very great men. It requires not a 
little assumption to contend that George Clinton, James Duane, the 
Livingstons, John Jay, Alexander Hamilton, Richard Morris, Philip 
Schuyler, Robert Harpur, Richard Varrick, and their like, acted 
heedlessly in creating the University of the State of New York. 
They proceeded thoughtfully in an effort to take time by the fore- 
lock. It was the first movement in America to organize the educa- 
tional work of a state upon a nonpolitical, nonsectarian, and every 
way nonexclusive basis which would bring the sovereign authority 
and the financial aid of the state to the practical support of educa- 
tion that should be unlimited and free. It is not too much to say 
that it was the first really strong educational conception in America, 
and that it was by a group of men than which there has not been 
a greater in the land. 

The plan at first provided that the Board of Regents should be 
legally possessed of all the properties and should exercise the powers 
of appointment and all the other governing powers over all col- 
leges and schools. But it was immediately seen that this would not 
work, and a reform was initiated in the Board itself. This reform 
provided for separate and local boards of trustees in all the institu- 
tions, with all of the powers over property, courses, appointments, 
and administration. The " University " was to be a supervisory 
university. The state began at once to aid Columbia College, and 
expected not only to continue to do so, but also to give its financial 
support and its supervisory helpfulness to all colleges and schools 
which should be created. The idea was to bind all together, and 
bind all to the state, to the end that the newer and the weaker 
institutions might have the fraternal aid of the older and the 
stronger ones, and that all the people and every part of the state 
might have the uplifting influence of this general organization of 



120 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

the more advanced institutions of learning in the state. In other 
words, New York was setting up a state organization supervisory 
of her higher learning. She was expecting to support and she was 
bound to advise. Nor was that all she had to do. These colleges 
and academies, organized and to be organized, required incorpora- 
tion by the state so that they might hold property and make con- 
tracts and do all the acts incidental to institutional life. And when 
the state exercised its authority to endow institutions with the 
power to hold property and do business, it was bound to see to it 
that each institution followed paths and did its work in ways which 
would comport with the character and promote the greatness of 
the state. It would have defeated the very ends of the plan to have 
left all this to the mere filing of papers of incorporation in the 
office of the secretary of state. That would have established no 
bond of union between one institution and another, or between the 
institutions and the state. Only rivalry and no mutuality of good 
will would have resulted. It would have been manifestly unwise 
to retain the ordinary exercise of the power of incorporation and 
educationally impossible to keep the powers of supervision in the 
Legislature itself. The only logical or even possible thing to do 
was done when the Board of Regents was created to grant, amend, 
and annul charters, to distribute the money of the state to institu- 
tions, and to assure grades and kinds of work which would accom- 
plish the ends that the founders of the state had in view. 

It has been said that the plan of the University of the State of 
New York was taken from France. Some features of it doubtless 
were. In framework it is very like that of the French system of 
higher education then and now. The French influence was particu- 
larly strong in America for the dozen years following the Revolu- 
tion and until Washington settled it that we were not going to have 
any foreign entanglements. The French troops and the French fleets 
had hardly left our shores after helping us to win independence, 
when this University was created. We were not drawing our plans 
of organization from England just then, although nothing could 
prevent or should have prevented the new individual colleges from 
having the largest interest in the studies that were common in the 
higher schools of England and Scotland, from which nearly all of 
the highly educated men of the United States had come. In view 
of all we have heard in recent years, it is amusing to read that 
Columbia College established a professorship in agriculture in 1793. 
We did send an agent to France immediately after the organization 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 121 

of the University to beg for financial aid, and it is likely that at 
least the framework of our plan was suggested by the educational 
organization of our ally and aid in the war from which we had just 
emerged battle-stained and poor, yet triumphant, with moral cour- 
age unabated, and with new found educational ambition. 

It must be admitted, I think, that this plan lias not worked very 
satisfactorily so far as the unity of the colleges of the state and 
cooperation between the colleges and the state have been concerned. 
The famous report made to the Board of Regents in 1787 made 
decisive allusion to the desirability of state aid to and supervision 
over academies as well as colleges, and this was speedily provided 
for in the act perfecting the University and in legislation which 
followed. And it must be said that, so far as the academies and 
the high schools have been concerned, the plan has worked very 
smoothly and probably produced all in the way of harmony in rela- 
tions and efficiency in operations that could have been expected. 
But it has not been so with the colleges, and, without implying 
personal animosities or anything more disagreeable than is clearly 
said, it seems to me best to plainly avow it in the hope of curing it. 
With every effort and desire to see the matter in its true light, I 
am convinced that any difficulties which may have hindered that 
cooperation of effort between the state and her colleges standing 
in truly fraternal relations to each other, which the University of 
the State was organized to promote, have arisen from officialism, 
from standing for prerogative, perhaps from the inevitable weak- 
nesses and uncertainties of first steps, rather than from inherent 
or structural defects in the legal and educational scheme. 

The strain upon the ship came early, and first in connection with 
Columbia, the college which derived its corporate existence, rights 
and powers in the new state from the very act creating the Uni- 
versity of the State of New York. It would be profitless to search 
out the details. It is enough to know that the Board of Regents 
and the board of trustees of Columbia differed over prerogative, 
and that this difference matured into dispute with inflammatory 
embellishments, into the discontinuance of the state's financial sup- 
port, and, probably worse than all else, into a practical severance of 
reciprocal relations. It defeated for generations, if not forever, the 
purpose of the founders of the state to make Columbia a state 
college and the mother of many colleges and schools which should 
together constitute a real state university. It was doubtless in- 
evitable, and probably necessary, but surely it was a heavy penalty, 



122 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

both upon the state and the college, for the inability of a few men 
to adjust their official powers so as to make a workable and effec- 
tive educational organization. 

The same thing happened, in even more aggravated form, with 
the first new college chartered by the Board of Regents. Refus- 
ing many applications for many years on the ground of insufficient 
property and endowment, the Board finally yielded to long continued 
importunity and chartered " Union College " in 1795. It was to ex- 
press not only educational, but also religious and political, " union." 
It was agreed that the board of trustees should never have a ma- 
jority of any one religious denomination, and that the president 
or a professor being a clergyman should not have the pastoral 
charge of a church. It was a college upon a new plane, for its 
charter rigidly excluded partisanship and guaranteed all educational 
freedom. It differed from all of the 12 colleges which had pre- 
ceded it in America in that it was not to be private, local or ex- 
clusive. All were welcome and all had equal rights. The state 
was even providing for the support of poor students. Democracy 
was taking a new step in education. In a word, it came as near be- 
coming a state college as could be in that day. In the first 20 years 
of its life the state gave it, in lands and funds, more than $350,- 
000. Then in the succeeding 10 years the question of prerogative 
broke out in heroic proportions. The Board of Regents and the 
President and the Board of Trustees each had their partisans. The 
atmosphere was surcharged with invective and legal learning. It 
was just after the Dartmouth College case and the lawyers relished 
the discussion. The controversy lasted long years and resulted, 
like the Dartmouth case, in breaking the relations between the col- 
lege and the state. It was determined in the end that the Regents 
had no control over courses and instruction, at least until such 
manifest educational fraud should be perpetrated as to call for a 
revocation of the charter for cause. The state naturally made no 
more appropriations to Union College, and Union naturally became 
more concerned about its own life than about the intellectual prog- 
ress of the commonwealth. There were losses all around but they 
were doubtless necessary, for college individuality and freedom had 
to be. 

Hamilton, the fine, small, classical college on the hill at Clinton, 
was chartered by the Regents in 181 2 after Being required to se- 
cure $50,000 in addition to investments in grounds and buildings. 
The state gave it in 30 years $120,000, and it has well deserved 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 1 23 

more. But with all that had occurred in connection with Columbia 
and Union it was easy to stop state aid, and, with the feeling that 
had become rife, that brought relations and sympathies to an end. 

About the same thing happened, in ways perhaps less marked, 
as to the University of the City of New York and several other 
institutions. 

Then came the National Land Grant Act of 1862, giving to each 
state the right to 30,000 acres of national lands for each repre- 
sentative in Congress to aid a state college or university which 
would accentuate the industrial arts. Other large federal grants 
have followed it. Aside from the advantage of the direct grants, 
this national policy has incited most of the states to give very much 
more than the national grants to their state universities, and it is 
not too much to say that half of the great universities of the 
country have grown out of it. New York would doubtless have 
absolutely lost her large interests in this but for Andrew D. 
White and Ezra Cornell. Through them Cornell University was 
founded by a legislative charter, and given the avails of the national 
grant on condition that the University would establish a free scholar- 
ship each year for each assembly district of the state. For nearly 
20 years not much came of this arrangement about scholarships. 
When I became State Superintendent of Public Instruction in 1886, 
not more than one third of these scholarships was occupied. In 
the majority of cases there was no one in the assembly district 
who was qualified for it and wanted it. I started a bill in the Legis- 
lature amending the charter so as to allow the Superintendent to fill 
vacant scholarships from surplus candidates in other districts, and 
that started a real paroxysm in the university. A joint hearing 
was arranged, and ex-President White, President Adams, and Judge 
Douglas Boardman came and forcefully urged divers arguments to 
show that the Legislature had no legal power to do it, would commit 
a moral wrong if it attempted it, and would ruin the university if it 
could accomplish such a thing. The Superintendent spoke his feeble 
word and the committee went into executive session. As we with- 
drew ex-President White put his strong educational arm through 
my frail one and said, " Young man ! Almost thou persuadest me 
to be a Christian." He and other Cornellians must have been al- 
together persuaded since then. As we talked on he even expressed 
apprehension lest the university officers might have said too much 
and the committee might do something wrong, but I was able to 
give him some comfort upon that point, and very soon the com- 



124 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

mittee voted unanimously to report the bill and it became a law. 
It filled up the state scholarships at Cornell through a system of 
competition and appointment which brought the state and the uni- 
versity into workable and somewhat reciprocal relations. The uni- 
versity has made the most of those relations and in turn has ac- 
quired a little of the feeling and a few of the attributes of a state 
university. The university occupies a situation peculiar to itself. 
It seems no nearer being a real state university than other colleges 
of the state have been at some time in their history. True, the 
number of free scholars it has trained form something of a factor 
in our population and rather an influential factor in our professional 
and political life. Aside from the scholarships, the state has only 
moral claims upon it. There is no sense of public ownership in it. 
Such relations as subsist between the state and the university seem 
commercial rather than educational, businesslike rather than in- 
spirational. And it is more than likely that neither the people of 
the state, the other higher institutions of learning in the state, 
nor the weight of opinion and feeling in Cornell University would 
be disposed to go far enough to make Cornell a real state university. 

In the meantime several good and a few strong institutions have 
developed. Vassar is one of the few excellent and strong women's 
colleges of the country. Colgate is a mature, small, growing, good 
institution. St Lawrence is doing considerable for large rural sec- 
tions where the college influence is much needed. The same may 
be said of Alfred. Several colleges under the auspices of the 
Roman Catholic church are pushing ahead with commendable vigor, 
while their relations with all the rest become more and more agree- 
able. The University of Rochester has long been an excellent in- 
stitution, never more capably led than now. Syracuse University 
has surprised not only the state but the country by its phenomenal 
advances in property, in the number of instructors and offerings 
and students, and in the virile fashion in which it welcomes the 
spirit of democracy and strives to push its way up the steep hills of 
higher learning. 

It is not practicable to even mention the professional or technical 
colleges and schools associated with or independent of universities. 
Some of them are of the first rank, some are honestly and per- 
severingly moving up to that rank, and some are so ambitious and 
yet so dependent upon tuition fees that they delude themselves 
into thinking that they are better than they are. And, unhappily, 
when schools do that, most of the people in their neighborhood 
or under their influence think that what the schools claim must be so. 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION I25 

But there have developed three tax-supported institutions which 
it would be inexcusable not to mention. Quite possibly they may 
be the advance guard of others of their kind. One is the State 
Normal College at Albany, the outgrowth of the first state normal 
school, which is now being raised to college grade and set to train- 
ing superintendents of schools and teachers for the secondary 
schools. The second is the Normal College of the City of New 
York, an old and large and cherished institution for the training 
of women teachers for the city schools. And the third is the Col- 
lege of the City of New York, an old institution, which has just 
been provided by the municipality with beautiful and elaborate 
buildings, and put in the way of being a great college or even of 
becoming a real university, and which happily seems to be coming 
to realize its great opportunities. 

But none of the higher institutions of the state, save these three, 
are free to students, and it would seem as though it must be said 
that the very largeness of many of them and the very greatness of 
some of them, and particularly the efforts which they are all mak- 
ing to be strong and great, must, while on the basis of privately 
endowed institutions, work against oneness of educational spirit and 
get in the way of inspirational helpfulness to the educational sys- 
tem of the state. At least it seems as though it had been so, and 
must continue to be so in the absence of special and concentrated 
effort to avoid it. And this implies no imputation that the men and 
women of these colleges and universities are disposed to have it 
so. It is said, with knowledge, that they wish not to have it so, 
and that many of them are very ready to go to the limits of time 
and strength to prevent it being so. But it is said in the hope that 
by some possibility it may initiate a movement which will swing 
college doors more freely to the youth of the state who may wish 
to enter them, or whom it is to the interest of the state to have 
enter them ; and which will also bring a more generous, a less self- 
interested, college influence into the middle and lower schools and 
into all the educational activities of the state. 

The writer is bound to be careful lest his long association with 
the philosophy and the feelings of a tax-supported state university 
of the Middle West befog his reasoning about the educational poli- 
cies of the Empire State, but on the other hand he is bound to try 
to give to his state anything growing out of that association which 
may be of advantage to her. 



126 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

I do not believe that it is desirable that all people should go to 
college. It would be quite as well if some who do go should do 
something else. But it ought to be fundamental, and it is going to 
be, in this country that none who really want to go and are pre- 
pared to go, shall be prevented from going by reason of tuition 
charges which they dare not assume. So much is already well 
settled in most of the states of the Union. The causes which have 
produced a great state university in nearly every state, which have 
produced as great universities in 40 years as those that have been 
two or three hundred years in the making, ought to be realized 
and reckoned with in the State of New York. It shows that de- 
mocracy is quite as much interested in and quite as able to endow 
colleges and universities as is aristocracy. And that only means 
that each will accomplish the most when they work in cooperation. 
It does not meet the question to say that there are innumerable 
scholarships in established institutions, and that the managers of 
universities are amiable and benevolent people. It is a question of 
fundamental right in this land of universal opportunity; and the 
democracy of every state will in time decree that every one shall 
have the utmost of educational opportunity which he seeks and is 
qualified to enter upon, without encountering the hazards of a 
single examination set by strangers who know nothing of his char- 
acter, earnestness or intellectual power, and without depending 
upon the favor of a faculty or a board of trustees. 

Moreover, there is occasion enough to expect, in the interest of 
all the schools, that the colleges and universities will relax their 
admission requirements in the interests of all round intellectual 
power to do their work, and of general earnestness and assiduity; 
and stop imposing upon those seeking admission just so much of 
this, that, and the other particular study as may result from the 
concessions, and courtesies, and refined log rolling of faculty con- 
ferences. In other words, the aristocratic view of intellectual worth, 
as well as the aristocratic view of property values, will have to 
give way, half way at least, to the democratic, in America. Let 
us not deceive ourselves or let the knights of the old order mis- 
lead us. There is infinitely less danger to education from political 
influence in tax-supported universities than there is from the money 
influence and the social influence in the universities that live upon 
gifts and reason that only an exclusive and favored class deserve 
their ministrations. This is not saying that the old manner of in- 
stitutions should give way, but only that they should modify some 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION \2J 

of their thinking as much and as fast as they can. It is saying 
that the intellectual power, and therefore the industrial and com- 
mercial as well as the professional power, of the country is to be 
reinforced overwhelmingly from the plain people, and that there- 
fore the advantages of the colleges and universities ought to be 
hedged about by no conditions which defeat the open chance for 
every one, and should be governed by no motive which tends to 
warp or thwart the educational policies of the schools below them. 
And it is saying that the college men of the state should find ways 
for doing something of this and for helping all the ambitious 
youths of the state to have what the genius of their country ac- 
cords to them, and for enabling the public opinion of the state tc 
acquire what it is reaching for without having very clear ideas 
about how to get it. 

It is very imperative to the physical, moral, and political health 
of our leading state that all the sciences shall be carried down with 
more exactness from the very top to the very bottom of the educa- 
tional system, and distributed more surely and more freely among 
all the people. For example, there has been found in the last 
quarter of a century a new scientific basis for medical practice. 
New York is certainly doing no less than any other state to protect 
and promote the health of the people, and she is leading decisively 
in guarding admissions to the medical profession. Yet there are 
medical colleges turning out scores or even hundreds of young 
people with the degree of " doctor of medicine " without training 
them in 25 per cent of the well ascertained scientific knowledge that 
is fundamental in the medical profession. This can only be corrected 
by the outspoken and even indignant protest of the men in charge 
of the great chemical, physiological, and bacteriological laboratories 
of the leading universities, acting together or through some authori- 
tative means of expression. For" example, again, there is no less 
need of associated and not antagonistic expression of scientific 
opinion upon the economic interests and the business and political 
policies of the state, than upon matters of physical health. All 
this and more can come only through more unity among our higher 
institutions of learning, and closer relations between them and all 
the schools and all the people of the state, and through some au- 
thoritative and disinterested expression that is able to command 
public attention and popular confidence. In a word, it is exceedingly 
desirable that the colleges and universities of New York be more 
decisively effective in the affairs of the state, and assuredly it is 



128 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

no less desirable that the popular opinion of the state be more 
concerned about and have more respect for the college and uni- 
versity influences in our affairs. 

How is it to be brought about ? Of course, there is the rub, but 
we ought to try to meet it. I can not assume to say how. Of 
course, I do not know. If given a clean sheet of paper and asked to 
sketch out a plan, I could not do it. I can only try to initiate a 
serious discussion in the hope that many wise heads will get to- 
gether, put the interests of all above the interests of some, and 
evolve a plan that will command the public support. 

It is more than likely that a teaching and investigating state uni- 
versity, like those at Ann Arbor and Madison and Champaign, is 
out of the question. It is not at all certain that it would be wise 
to try to establish one here and now. It could probably come only 
through the conversion of Cornell University into a real state uni- 
versity, and, as already suggested, that is not practicable because 
the people, the other institutions, and Cornell itself, would not unite 
upon the advisability of it. It is not practicable to found another 
because our educational system is so far matured and has so many 
high grade institutions, as well as because Cornell is entitled to 
the avails of the federal grants. 

Do not the conditions point to the wisdom of a series of free 
municipal universities stretching across the state ? The city of New 
York has already established such an institution, in the College of 
the City of New York, and, as already said, given it a costly home 
and an elaborate equipment. There are a quarter of a million people 
within practical trolley distances at the junction of the Hudson 
and the Mohawk, and among them is old " Union College," with 
several professional schools loosely affiliated into Union University. 
That institution and every one of its schools stand seriously in 
need of, and richly deserve, financial assistance ; and the people 
about them no less seriously need to have some ownership in them 
to the end that they may have some rights in those schools and 
get more benefits out of them. The cities of Albany, Troy, Sche- 
nectady, Cohoes, Rensselaer and Watervliet might, it would seem 
wisely, put money into Union University and get the larger ad- 
vantages which it might give to their children and their municipal 
affairs. Syracuse and Rochester practically have municipal uni- 
versities now, for they have each put their money into institu- 
tions, made excellent ones of them, and received and assured 
better returns than they have ever gained upon any other invest- 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION 120, 

ment. Buffalo, strong, prosperous and wealthy, the second city of 
the state, has a good nucleus of a municipal university, and ought 
not to hesitate a moment about putting into it the millions which 
would make it worthy of the city whose name it bears. And this 
policy could be acted upon in every part of the state where there 
are people enough and the wealth sufficient to justify it. And 
the great state itself might very properly and with compensating 
advantages to itself aid such enterprises from its treasury. 

Why can not the " University of the State of New York " be 
made the active agency of the state for coordinating such insti- 
tutions with the endowed institutions, for giving all in some way 
the aid of the state, and for making all more potent in the affairs 
of the state? The University of the State is here, it is old, and 
it is to stay. After more than a hundred years of life it was es- 
tablished in the state Constitution. True, it has not fulfilled the 
expectations of the founders of the state so far as the colleges 
have been concerned, although it may be truly said that it has done 
much more than that as to the academies and high schools. If 
the difficulty as to the colleges was not inherent in the law, was it 
not temporary as well as temperamental ? Have we not all got truer 
bearings about official powers, and have we not lived long enough 
to know that there is small excuse for haggling among educational 
men over official prerogative? Are we not able to see by this time 
that the " University of the State of New York " is dependent upon 
the colleges of the state for substance .and for influence ? The mere 
powers to grant and amend charters are perfunctory and mechanical 
ones. Any rational public officer could do that. More, much more, 
than that is needed. It is nothing less than the entering of the col- 
leges and universities into a plan which will give a state organization 
of advanced schools the vitality that will warm the blood of the 
weakest and bring the stimulating help of all to the moral and in- 
tellectual support of every great interest of the people of the state. 
There is no occasion whatever for exactions by the state upon 
reputable educational institutions of the state. Of course the 
state is entitled to and bound to have annual statements of the es- 
sential business affairs of every corporation to which it has given 
corporate life; and of course the Education Department of the state 
government is bound to have an annual statement of the salient fea- 
tures of the educational work of every institution which exists by 
the authority of the state, shares in the munificence of the state, 
and bears some part of the responsibility for doing the educational 



I3O NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

work of the state. So much is as necessary to prevent fraud and 
imposition as it is necessary to an understanding of what is being 
done. Beyond this I am sure the state has nothing to impose, at 
least upon institutions that are well up to the top of the system or 
institutions that are doing the best they can. It asks their help and 
offers them such assistance as it can. It makes no disguise of its 
thought that it is quite as dependent, probably more dependent, upon 
them than they are upon it. And it puts away all suggestion of any 
course which might be obnoxious to any successful institution of the 
higher learning. Then, as this instrumentality is here and to stay, 
and even though its name may have seemed confusing to some, and 
notwithstanding that there were some old disputes over prerogative, 
and as there is no other open way in sight, why can not the col- 
leges and universities of the state really join with us in the " Uni- 
versity of the State of New York " and use it to their own good, 
while they make of it what they may for the promotion of all the 
high interests to which the lives of their people and their corporate 
existence have been dedicated? 

There is reason enough for saying that this will increase the will- 
ingness of the state to practically aid the higher learning. The 
state is strong and rich so far as money goes, and it ought to do 
that much more liberally and somewhat more rationally than it has 
done, to the end that it may be strong and rich intellectually. Uni- 
versities and colleges are quite as important in the affairs of a state 
as are canals or highways, or even tariffs or the control of railroads 
and commercial trusts. The great soul of the people of the State 
of New York is right and will respond, as it has always responded, 
warmly to any rational scheme for the promotion of the higher 
scientific interests as well as the common intelligence of the state. 
But the state can not move in any large matter with any confi- 
dence until those who ought to agree do agree, not only upon the 
desirability of a movement, but also upon the plan of procedure. 

It is not for the writer to have, and to try to enforce, a plan, 
for it will have to be the plan of many. Some features have been 
advanced here and there. It has been suggested that the state 
create a fund for the aid of all deserving institutions upon some 
mutually equitable basis; that the state increase the scholarships 
in different institutions; that the state pay the tuition of certain 
students in the colleges in something like the manner it now pays 
the tuition of nonresident pupils in the high schools; it has even 
been proposed that the state in some way reimburse certain or all 



COLLEGES AND THE STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION I31 

institutions for tuition fees of graduates of the secondary schools 
who wish to go to the colleges of the state. It has been proposed 
to found a distinct state university ; to seek to make Cornell into 
a state university; to develop the State Normal College into a 
state university ; to expand the scientific work of the Science Divi- 
sion of the State Education Department ; to encourage the evolution 
of municipal universities by new legislation and with some meas- 
ure of state aid; and to take many other steps in the direction 
of freer opportunities for the youth of the state in the colleges, 
and the larger influence of the colleges upon the schools and the 
affairs of the state. No one of these suggestions has been much 
considered, and to none of them do I now give approval or express 
disapproval. 

The first thing effected should be a college and university organi- 
zation in the state which would be strong enough, tall enough, 
and courageous enough to look above the getting of money and 
students for one institution, and strive to quicken all the educa- 
tional activities of the state. If we will do that, the ways will 
open to us. Frankly, it seems as though if we are to do this at all, 
we shall have to do it through the " University of the State of New 
York." It is at our hand, and it is the only instrument likely to be 
at our hand. I have come to believe that if it did not exist we 
could not create a better. It was the work of the founders of the 
state. Their sons did not do very well with it, but their grandsons 
did a little better, and their great-grandsons ought to do a great 
deal better. The scheme needs money and a great deal of it. But 
when we show that we have oneness of spirit and will be safe and 
sane administrators of it, we are quite likely to have it. The state 
will perhaps give it to us; and it is not difficult to believe that 
wealthy residents of the state would be glad to find confidence in an 
organization which was really representative of all the higher educa- 
tional interests of the state and would surely and safely execute 
their bequests for the equitable and rational promotion of all the 
interests of all the people. 



DEGREE-CONFERRING INSTITUTIONS OF NEW YORK 

STATE 

Showing date of origin; by what authority organized; students and faculty for year 
1908-9, and graduates from date of origin. The information in this paper was collected 
in the preparation of the preceding special theme, and shows very reliably the development 
and present strength of New York State colleges and universities. The statistics are ac- 
curately transcribed from the reports of the several institutions on file in the Education 
Department so far as these reports include the necessary information. Where reports 
are lacking, the most reliable data available have been used. Degrees not recognized by 
the University of the State of New York have been omitted. Statistics for summer schools 
and extension courses are not included. 



NAME OF INSTITUTION 



INCORPO- 
RATED 



Date 



bBy 



1908-9 



Stu- 
dents 



Fac- 
ulty 



GRADUATED THROUGH JUNB 1909 



First 
degrees 



Higher 
degrees 



With- 
out 
degrees 



Total 



a Universities 

Columbia University 

Originally King's College . . 

Became Columbia College . . 

Became Columbia Univer- 
sity 

Cornell University 

New York University 

Originally University of the 
City of New York 

Became New York Univer- 
sity 

St Lawrence University 

Syracuse University 

Originally Genesee College. . 

Became Syracuse University 
Union University 

Originally Union College . . 

Became Union University. 
University of Buffalo 



I7S4 
1784 

1896 
1865 



Kin< 
L 



183 1 



1896 
1856 



1849 
1870 



L 
GL 



1795 
1873 
1846 



3 985 
3 724 



S06 
3 101 



720 
466 



578 
297 



34 
239 



146 
175 



10 030 
18 523 



1 140 
4 938 



12 246 
4 489 



I IOC 

I 5,61 259 



93 
340 



Total . 



75 694 



6 173 



Graduate departments 

Columbia Univ., graduate 

dep't 

Made up of: 

Faculty of Political Sci- 
ence 

Faculty of Philosophy. . . 

Faculty of Pure Science . . 

Cornell Univ., graduate dep't. 

New York Univ., graduate sch 



1896 



1880 
1890 
1892 
1896 
1886 



310 
282 



199 
31 



Total . 



Colleges for men 

Canisius College 

Colgate University. . . . 

Originally Madison Univer- 
sity 

Became Colgate University. 
College of St Francis Xavier. . 
College of the City of New 

York 

Columbia College 

Originally King's College. 

Became Columbia College 
Fordham Univ., St John's 
College 

Became part of Fordham 
University 



1 607 



54 
312 



1846 
1890 
1861 

1854 



1754 
1784 



1846 



King 
L 



R 



80 



445 
667 



ISO 
650 



464 
562 



807 



5 8 



3»o 
26 



11 130 

20 343 



I 495 
5 566 



12 64s 
4 551 



85 039 



166 
678 



1 215 



5ii 

562 



866 



a Under " Universities " are included statistics for all departments of which the Uni- 
versity is composed. As these statistics, except for higher degrees, are also given under 
the separate departments they are of course duplicates of what follow. Under " Higher 
degrees " are reported all higher degrees conferred upon examination in all departments of 
the universities. These degrees are omitted under the separate departments except for 
the departments of St Lawrence University, Union University and the University of Buffalo. 

b L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. 

c Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the University. 



DEGREE-CONFERRING INSTITUTIONS 



133 



Degree-conferring institutions of New York State (continued) 



NAME OF INSTITUTION 



Colleges for men {continued) 

Hamilton College 

Hobart College 

Originally Geneva College . . 

Became Hobart Free College 

Became Hobart College .... 

Manhattan College 

New York University College . 
Niagara Univ., collegiate dep't 
Polytechnic Inst, of Brooklyn . 

Originally Brooklyn Colle- 
giate and Polytechnic In- 
stitute 

Became Polytechnic Insti- 
tute of Brooklyn 

St Bonaventure's College 

St Francis College 

St John's College, Brooklyn. . 
St Joseph's Seminary & College 

St Stephen's College 

Union College 



Total , 



St 



Colleges for women 

College of New Rochelle. . 
k Originally College cf 

Angela 

Became College of New 

Rochelle 

Columbia Univ., Barnard Col- 
lege 

D'Youville College & Academy 

of the Holy Angels. 
Elmira College 

Originally Elmira Female 
Col 

Became Elmira College 
Normal College of the City of 

New York 

Vassar College 

Originally Vassar Female 
Col 

Became Vassar College. . . . 
Wells College 

Originally Wells Seminary. 

Became Wells College 

William Smith College 

Established by Hobart Col 



Total . 



INCORPO- 
RATED 



1908-9 GRADUATED THROUGH JUNE 1909 



Date 



1812 



1825 
1852 
i860 
1863 
1831 
1883 



1869 



187S 
1884 
1871 
1908 
i860 
1795 



1904 

IQIO 
1889 
I908 



1855 
I89O 



l86l 
1867 



1868 
l870 
I908 



Colleges for men and women 

Adelphi College 

Alfred Univ., College of Liberal 

Arts 

Cornell Univ., College of Arts 

and Science 

Keuka College 

St Lawrence Univ., College of 

Letters and Science 

Syracuse Univ., College of 
Liberal Arts 

Originally Genesee College . . 

Became Syracuse Univ., Col. 

of Lib. Arts 

University of Rochester 



Total . 



1857 



1S56 



1849 



1S70 
1851 



aBy 



R 

R 
R 
L 

GL 
R 
L 
R 



L 
GL 



GL 
R 



Stu- 
dents 



186 
107 



74 

517 

65 

250 



88 
34 
5S 
86 
46 
332 



4 5°8 



498 



16 
290 



836 
018 



180 



454 
127 



90 
28 



191 
396 



352 



Fac- First Higher 
ulty degrees degrees 



3 450 



2 676 
911 



79i 
493 
117 
358 



182 
178 
155 



330 
5 591 



570 24 310 



69 



50 
101 



685 



012 
381 



222 
13 



24 



408 



329 
5c 



829 
38 



6 
6 10 



1 737 



80 



28 



669 



137 



With- 
out 
degrees 



Total 



109 



689 
919, 



87r 
493 
124 
385 



182 
178 
189 
31 
355 
5 610 



800 



012 
500 



379 



335 
507 



829 
38 



747 
C2 719 



1 775 



9 950 

a L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. 

b Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the university. 

cThis total does not include higher degrees if any have ever been conferred in this de- 
partment. 



134 



NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 



Degree-conferring institutions of New York State (continued) 



NAME OP INSTITUTION 



INCORPO- 
RATED 



Date aBy 



Stu- 
dents 



Fac- 
ulty 



GRADUATED THROUGH JUNE 1909 



First 
degrees 



Higher ^ith. 
degrees 



out 
degrees 



Total 



18 
1890 

1822 



Theology 
A'fred Univ., A fred Theologi- 
cal Seminary 1857 

Auburn Theological Seminary. 1820 
Colgate Univ., Hamilton Theo- 
logical Seminary 

Originally Hamilton Theo. 

Sem 

Became part of Colgate 

Univ 

General Theological Seminary 
of the Protestant Episcopal 

Church 

Hartwick Sem., theological 

dep't I 1816 

Niagara Univ., Seminary of 

Our Lady of Angels 

Originally The Seminary of 

Our Lady of Angels 1863 

Became part of Niagara 

Univ 

Rochester Theological Semi- 
nary 1854 

St Bernard's Seminary 

St Bonaventure's Col., theo 

logical dep't 1875 

St John's Col., theological 

dep't 

St Joseph's Seminary & College 

Originally St Joseph's Sem. . I 1886 
Became St Joseph's Sem. & 

College 1 908 

St Lawrence University, Can 

ton Theological School 1856 

Union Theological Seminary. . 1839 



Total . 



Education 
Columbia Univ., Teachers Col- 
lege 

Originally New York College 
for the Training of Teach- 
ers 

Became Teachers College. . . 
Became affiliated with Co- 
lumbia University 

New York State Normal Col- 
lege 

Originally Albany Normal 

Sch 

Became N. Y. S. Normal 

College 

New York Univ., School of 

Pedagogy 

Syracuse Univ., Teachers Col- 
lege 



Total . 



1889 



1844 
1890 
1890 
1906 



L 

R 

L 
GL 

R 

E 

GL 

R 

L 
L 



108 

S 

55 



16 
169 



1 028 



187 



63 9 
78 



I 896 



So 



28 



16s 



50 

205 



648 



143 
17 



1 523 



454 
818 



726 

29 

267 



993 
195 



162 
64 



253 
039 



1 364 
63 286 



40 



iS 



6 647 



18 
458 



872 



726 

52 

267 



048 
212 



162 



64 
234 



303 
244 



C2 60S 



2 097 

d 3 286 
ci 43 



8 188 



a L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. 

b Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the university. 

c This total does not include higher degrees if any have ever been conferred in this de- 
partment. 

d Normal diplomas granted by Albany Normal School before it became New York Stats 
Normal College. 



DEGREE-CONFERRING INSTITUTIONS 



135 



Degree-conferring institutions of New York State (continued) 



NAME OF INSTITUTION 



INCORPO- 
RATED 



Date 



&By 



GRADUATED THROUGH JUNE I909 



Stu- 
dents 



Fac- 
ulty 



First 
degrees 



Higher 
degrees 



With- 
out 
degrees 



Total 



Law 

Univ., 



Faculty of 



Columbia 
Law. . . 

Cornell Univ., College of Law. . 

Fordham Univ., School of Law 

Originally St John's College, 

School of Law 

Became Fordham Univer- 
sity, School of Law 

New York Law School 

New York University Law 

School 

Metropolis Law School 

United with above 

St Lawrence Univ., Brooklyn 

Law School 

Syracuse Univ., School of Law 
Union Univ., Albany Law 

School 

Originally law department, 

University of Albany. . . . 

Became Union University, 

Albany Law School 

University of Buffalo, Buffalo 

Law School 

Part of Niagara University 

until 1891 



1858 
1886 



1904 

1907 
1891 

1858 
1891 
1895 

1901 
1895 



1851 
1873 
1887 



Total. 



Medicine 
aColumbia Univ., College of 
Physicians and Surgeons 
Originally College of Physi- 
cians and Surgeons 

Became part of Columbia . 
Cornell Univ., Medical College 

Eclectic Medical College 

Fordham Univ., School of 

Medicine 

Originally St John's College 

medical dep't 

Became Fordham Univ. 

School of Medicine 

Long Island College Hospital. 
N. Y. Homeopathic Med. Col 
lege & Flower Hospital . 
Originally Homeopathic 
Medical College of the 

State of New York 

Became New York Homeo- 
pathic Medical College . . . 
Became the N. Y. Homeo- 
pathic Med. College and 

Hospital 

Became the N. Y. Homeo- 
pathic Med. Col. & Flower 

Hospital 

N. Y. Medical College and 
Hospital for Women 



1807 
i860 



1907 
1858 



1869 



1908 
1863 



3S8 
225 
146 



83 5 

770 



249 
179 



346 



221 
96 



364 
94 



28 



5 °97 
1 102 



2 544 

3 0S4 



436 
3 4o 



163 



173 
4S 



7 469 



637 
847 



2 3 
I 693 



369 



445 



d$ 097 
01 102 



2 665 
<*3 133 



436 
^340 

3 146 



16 48s 



7 469 



63 7 
847 



2 389 
I 706 



369 



a The original medical department of Columbia University was established in 1767 as 
the medical faculty of Kings College but was discontinued in 1813. g . 

b L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. p 

.. c Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the university. ; 

d This total does not include higher degrees if any have ever been conferred in this de- 
partment. 



136 



NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 



Degree-conferring institutions of New York State {continued) 



NAME OF INSTITUTION 



INCORPO- 
RATED 



Date 



aBy 



Stu- 
dents 



Fac- 
ulty 



GRADUATED THROUGH JUNE 1909 



First 
degrees 



Higher| WitJ,. 
de S rees degrees 



Total 



of 



Medicine (.continued) 
Syracuse Univ., College 

Medicine 

Originally Geneva Med. Col- 
lege 

Transferred and established 
as College of Physicians 
and Surgeons of Syracuse 
Univ 

Became Syracuse Univ., 

College of Medicine 

Union Univ., Albany Medical 
College 

Became part of Union Univ. 
University and Bellevue Hos- 
pital Medical College 

University Medical College.. 

Bellevue Hospital Med. Col- 
lege 

United to form University 
and Bellevue Hospital 

Med. College 

Univ. of Buffalo, Medical Dep't 

Niagara Univ., medical dep't 

Transferred to Buffalo 



1835 

1872 

1875 

1839 

1873 



1837 
1861 



1846 



Total . 



Dentistry 

College of Dental and Oral Sur- 
gery of New York 

Originally N. Y. College of 

Dental Surgery 

(Never in operation) 
New York Dental School . . . 
Above institutions consoli- 
dated as College of Dental 
and Oral Surgery of N. Y. 
New York College of Dentistry 
Univ. of Buffalo, College of 
Dentistry 



1852 
1892 



1905 
1865 



Total . 



Pharmacy 

Brooklyn College of Pharmacy 
Columbia Univ., College of 

Pharmacy of the City of 

New York 

Became a department of 

Columbia 

Union Univ., Albany College 

of Pharmacy 

Univ. of Buffalo, College of 

Pharmacy 



1831 

1904 



Potal . 



Veterinary 

Cornell Univ., New York State 
Veterinary College 



1894 



03 



94 
164 



2 694 



2 456 



3C4 

73 



46 



I 941 
738 



492 
190 
267 

73 
116 



109 
19 
14 



2 956 
824 

3 547 

55 7j 
632 



646 



5 56o 



2 694 
12 447 



32 396 



1 941 
738 



2 956 

947 

£3 547 

584 
663 



a L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. 

b Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the university. 

c This total does not include higher degrees if any have ever been conferred in this de- 
partment. 



DEGREE-CONFERRING INSTITUTIONS" 



*37 



Degree-conferring institutions of New York State (concluded) 





INCORPO- 

RATED 


190 


8-9 


GRADUATED THROUGH J 


UNE 1909 


NAME OF INSTITUTION 


Date 


aBy 


Stu- 
dents 


Fac- 
ulty 


First Higher 
degrees degrees 

1 


With- 
out 
degrees 


Total 


Veterinary (continued) 
New York Univ., New York 
American Veterinary Col. . 






16 


17 


1 009 








N. Y. Col. of Vet. Surgeons. 

American Veterinary College 

Columbia Vet. Col. was 
merged in Amer. Vet .Col. 

Above institutions combined 
under name of New York 
American Veterinary Col. 


1857 
187s 

1884 
1899 


L 
GL 








Total 


1 10 

697 
S69 

1 162 

223 
667 

401 
94 


46 

108 
35 

70 

37 
55 

31 

16 


1 210 

2 065 

' 3 713 
J 

296 

1 694 

285 
91 








Engineering and technology 

Columbia Univ., Faculty of 


1864 
1868 

1868 
1862 


E 
E 

E 

E 


b 
b 

b 




d.2 064; 


Cornell Univ., College of Civil 


Cornell Univ., Sibley College of 
Mechanical Eng. & Mech. 
Arts 


di 713 


New York Univ., School of 


^296 
1 694 


Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. 


Incorporated as Rensselaer 


1826 
183s 

1861 

1901 
1896 


L 
L 

L 

E 
R 


b 


33 


Became Rensselaer Institute 
Became Rensselaer Poly- 
technic Institute 

Syracuse Univ., Lyman Cor- 
neous Smith Col. of Applied 


^285 
124 


Thomas S. Clarkson Memorial 
School of Technology 


Total 


3 813 

158 

941 


352 

14 
37 


8 144 

53 
455 




33 


8 177 


Art 

Columbia Univ., Faculty of 
Fine Arts 


1906 

1873 


E 
E 


Syracuse Univ., College of 
Fine Arts 




138 






593 




1 099 

415 
63 


5 1 

77 
5 


508 
310 




138 


646 


Agriculture 

Cornell Univ., College of Agri- 


1868 
1906 


E 
L 


St Lawrence Univ., School of 
Agriculture 




9 












Total 


478 

34 

133 
45 

956 


82 

12 

9 

45 

31 


3io 

14 

238 
131 

205 




9 




Other 

Alfred Univ., N. Y. State 
School of Clay-working and 
Ceramics 


1900 

1871 

1887 

1900 


L 

E 
E 

E 


319 


Cornell Univ., Col. of Archi- 






238 

183 

261 


N. Y. State Library School. . . 
New York Univ., School of| 
Commerce, Accounts & Fi-I 




52 
56 




Total 






588 




108 


696 










Grand total excluding dupli- 


27 859*3 485 


112 733 


7 232I 


SI5 913 


CI35 878 



a L indicates this institution was incorporated by special act of the Legislature; R indi- 
cates incorporation by the Regents; E indicates that the department was established by 
the board of trustees of the institution of which the school is a department; GL indicates 
incorporation with the Secretary of State under the general law. 

b Wherever higher degrees have been granted in this department they are included in 
the total for the university. 

cThis total includes 3286 diplomas granted by the Albany Normal School before it 
became the New York State Normal College. 

dThis total does not include higher degrees if any have ever been conferred in this 
department. 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 

The success of the Union armies in the Civil War expressed much 
more than the triumph of physical force. The war was not waged 
on either side for the mere subjugation of men or the enlargement 
of empire. The awful sacrifices were neither to ambition nor to 
greed. They were to democracy and the natural right of man. No 
arbiter was left save the sword. The sword was held by the 
Almighty and decided for the right. But the issue was moral, intel- 
lectual, political, legal. Both armies were comprised of American 
patriots. On either side the captains and the men were so earnest 
in their feelings, so sincere in their thinking, that they freely pledged 
their devotion with their lives. The issue was moral, and when the 
battles were over the South was wrong. People act according to 
their lights. Men are right or wrong as they think they are. Historic 
and patriotic traditions were no less binding, intellectual culture no 
less marked, religious feeling no less common, in the South than 
in the North. But the sections had inherited differing situations, 
and had been trained in differing schools. The differences became 
fundamental in morals and in politics and had to be settled on the 
field. And the great court of last resort had to bend to the progress 
of the world. It was union, therefore democracy established in law 
and able to govern, therefore liberty and the Golden Rule, that 
triumphed through the victories of the armies of the Union. 

Freedom, equality, security, opportunity, are vital to religion that 
is genuine, to education that is of worth, to politics that inspire, to 
work that makes much of the workman. They are empty words 
without law and the power to enforce it. The democracy which in 
combination they create had taken long strides, in the old world and 
particularly in the new, before our Civil War, but democracy was 
overweighted until the manhood, the legal philosophy, the state- 
craft of Lincoln shaped the politics which forced the war and 
opened the way for the logical evolution of the nation. He did 
it in public discussion with the foremost statesman of the day. 
It is this that lifts the Lincoln-Douglas debates to the very highest 
plane in the history of America. 

Slavery had existed in the North and it existed throughout the 
South when the Union was formed. It was much discussed in the 
convention which formed the Constitution. No word of the Con- 
Address before the Albany Institute and Art Society, Albany N. Y., 
February 10, 1910. 



Map of 
ILLINOIS 

SHOWING CONGRESSIONAL 
DISTRICTS IN 1858 AND 
PLACES OF THE 

LINCOLN -DOUGLAS 

JOINT DEBATES 




THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I39 

stitution forbade it. The instrument recognized it in fixing the 
representation in Congress ; it even went so far as to forbid pro- 
hibition of the foreign slave trade for twenty years. All the im- 
plications of the Constitution accorded the legal right to ownership 
and trade in human property within territorial limits. Without this 
the " more perfect union " could not be. And " union " had to 
be : without it the Revolution had been in vain, and independence 
and democracy would be but bursting bubbles. The only course 
was taken. Not in apology but in fairness it should be said that 
slavery had been common the world over, that its forms and its 
evils were not in very aggravated form in America, and that its ad- 
herents were not all in the South nor its opponents altogether in the 
North. But as the country grew in population and in territory, the 
slave system grew in strength and in inherent viciousness. It 
created more adherents and opponents, and the contentions which 
it forced became serious and threatening. 

From the beginning to the end only a glorious few dealt with it 
on moral grounds. There were incidents enough to stir the moral 
sensibilities in the North. The moral sensibilities of the South were 
never much disturbed. But let it not be implied that the South was 
without moral sensibilities. The South recognized theoretical wrong 
in slavery, but believed that the actual wrongs would be more and 
greater without it than with it. But moral issues do not down. As 
the lines formed, freedom gained in conviction and in determination, 
and slavery grew in resourcefulness, in speciousness, in legal subtle- 
ties, and in oratorical power. 

Politics clouded and confused the issues. Political parties tried 
to get in or to keep in power. Of course their attitudes were shifty 
until moral sense forced its political and its legal opportunity. Pre- 
tense, subterfuge, and bargaining, delayed the issue which organ- 
ized parties feared to meet. 

While the lawyers and statesmen were practically agreed that 
there could be no forcible outlawry of slavery by Congress in the 
states which had it when they came into the Union, the question 
as to the power of Congress over national territory beyond the 
organized states, and in reference to states seeking admission to the 
Union, was a large and difficult one. Congress had, before the Con- 
stitution, assumed to prohibit slavery in the old North West Terri- 
tory, out of which the states of Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois 
and Indiana have been constituted, but that was when the general 
expectation was that the whole country would become free, and the 



140 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

legal powers and intendments were then not much considered. The 
" Missouri Compromise " admitted that state to the Union in 1820 
with slavery, but prohibited it in all common territory north of 
36 30', the state's northern boundary line. It gave the slave sys- 
tem more territory and more voting power. It seemed also to con- 
cede that Congress had control of the question in all common terri- 
tory. 

Of the original states, seven were northern, and six southern. 
The admission of Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee during the 
administrations of Washington and Adams, established an equilib- 
rium between the North and the South in the Senate. This was 
continued for fifty years by the admission, in pairs, of Ohio and 
Louisiana, Indiana and Mississippi, Illinois and Alabama, Maine 
and Missouri, Arkansas and Michigan, Florida and Iowa, Texas 
and Wisconsin. In the meantime, the vast expanse of territory 
stretching to the Pacific had been acquired, and much more of it 
lay north of the Missouri Compromise line (36 30') than south 
of it. Adhering to that agreement, there would be more free than 
slave states. Slavery must do something or lose the equilibrium. 
The something was the only unconscionable war in our history — 
the war with Mexico. It succeeded in its immediate but not in its 
ultimate aim. The unexpected happens. Gold was found in Cal- 
ifornia, and it speedily formed and forced the admission of a state 
that had not been foreseen. And that state decided for itself that 
it would be a free state. And, aside from that, the Northwest grew 
much faster than the Southwest. Without legal stimulants or fet- 
ters, freedom outruns slavery. So, other free states were coming 
along in the natural order. By 1850 slavery saw that much more, 
and something drastic and far-reaching, must be done to hold the 
voting equilibrium in the Senate. 

This time the something was the destruction of the slavery limita- 
tion in the Missouri Compromise so far as New Mexico and Utah 
were concerned. Therefore they were organized as territories and 
empowered to have slavery or not as they pleased. There were 
associated propositions, but the partial destruction of the long 
settled line between slave territory and free, with a more forceful 
fugitive slave law, contained the milk in the cocoanut. The debate 
was great. It was pathetic too. Both of the political parties bent 
the knee. Clay, the great leader of the Whigs, came back to the 
Senate from his final illness to champion another compromise. 
Calhoun, the mighty captain of the southern Democrats, got up 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I4I 

from his deathbed to hear his speech read by another in the Senate 
debate. Cass's hopes led him to accept the new departure rather 
easily. Webster did so less easily, but he did it. Ambition makes 
cowards of great as well as small. With his " seventh of March " 
speech, he passed into the long shadows and soon on to his grave. 
Freedom wept. Certainly it was a great debate, but surely the 
explanations, the self-accusing speciousness, the pathos, and the re- 
sult, take away the satisfaction of it. The measures passed. A 
New York president, as well as a Massachusetts senator, ap- 
proved. Political parties had saved themselves for the time, but 
they had lost their opportunities. 

Chase, Douglas, Seward, and Sumner now came to the fore 
in the Senate. The inevitable reaction, the natural apprehension of 
results made for quiet for a time. Slavery had triumphed and was 
quiescent. The hunting and the rescue of slaves were distract- 
ing in the North. The determination of the Supreme Court that 
an owner might take his slave into free territory and that there was 
no power in Congress nor in a state or territory to hold him free 
upon ground that had been solemnly dedicated to freedom, was dis- 
concerting. " Uncle Tom's Cabin " was inflaming. Yet statesmen 
were much at peace for four years. When Nebraska asked admis- 
sion to the Union in 1854, Douglas set the fire which was to be 
consuming. 

The territory of Nebraska comprised the present states of Kan- 
sas, Nebraska, both Dakotas, part of Colorado, and Wyoming. As 
chairman of the Senate committee on territories, Douglas presented 
a bill for the admission of Nebraska. Soon he amended it so as 
to provide for two states, Nebraska and Kansas, doubtless expect- 
ing that one would be a free and the other a slave state. His bill 
offered to the South more than the South had ever asked. No one 
had proposed so much. He has said that he prepared the measure 
alone and wholly upon his own initiative. He proposed to remove 
the states already formed, and those to be formed thereafter, from 
all action by Congress so far as slavery was concerned. They were 
to settle the question for themselves, subject only to the determina- 
tion of the Supreme Court under the Constitution as it was. As 
at first drawn, the bill left the repeal of the prohibition against 
slavery in the Missouri Act of 1820 to implication, but the Senator 
soon modified the measure so as to repeal it expressly. The South 
was so surprised that it could hardly make itself believe there was 
not a hidden pitfall. The South and Douglas were more than a 



I42 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

match for the North alone. The debate in both houses was the 
ablest and the bitterest in our parliamentary history. 

History will always say that all this was " mere politics," so far 
as Douglas was concerned. He was making a present to the South 
to solidify southern support of his presidential aspirations. He 
must have reasoned that sophistry and organization could hold the 
North sufficiently. He was also avoiding the responsibility of vot- 
ing in the Senate directly for or against slavery every time a new 
state was admitted to the Union, for whichever way he voted it 
would endanger his seat either in northern or southern Illinois. 
As a national statesman it must necessarily put him to embarrass- 
ment either in the Northern States or in the Southern. But his 
action gave him little comfort. He was not so strong in the nomi- 
nating convention of 1856 as in that of 1852. He had already 
quarreled with Buchanan. The patronage was being used against 
him and the cleavage in the Democratic party was' in sight. In 
Illinois, the sentiment, the apportionment, and the political organi- 
zation which his twelve years in the Senate created, made him 
practically invincible. The political traditions of Illinois were all 
with him. The state had always, even in the election of the first 
Harrison, cast its electoral vote for the Democratic candidate. Yet 
there was a cloud rising over it all, and with the election of the 
Legislature in 1858, which would choose his successor, a day for 
something of a reckoning was at hand. 

Illinois was a great country for political reckonings. The state 
was yet in its pioneer days. Half of the black loam prairies that 
are now worth two hundred dollars or more per acre, had not 
been broken by the plow. Indeed, they were often so wet that 
there were doubts about their ever being of much value, and the 
new and scattered cabins were set upon the knolls or at the edges 
of the occasional growths of timber that appeared. The roads 
were few, and for months together the mud was bottomless. There 
were hardly stones enough to mark the corners of the mile square 
sections, and Lincoln had never split rails enough to make any 
show of fences. The osage orange hedges were not yet grown. 
The " prairie schooners,'' with migrating settlers, often sailed 
across the open prairies by sun or compass, as the vessel does at 
sea. The people were few and the towns small. The Illinois 
Central Railroad, from Chicago to Cairo, had been opened but two 
years before. Life was arduous and severe. But the people gloried 
in it. Their common joke was, and sometimes is, that Ohio and 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 



143 



Indiana were settled by " fellers " who started to go out West and 
lost their nerve just before they ought to. There is nothing like 
American pioneering to make hospitable, tolerant, independent, and 
heroic men and women. 

But the life was often solitary, and the people liked to get 
together. The agricultural fairs and the political hustings 
afforded their best opportunities for mixing. Fairs ordinarily 
dissolved into political discussions. The county fairs rounded 
up the politics of the counties, and the state fairs the politics of 
the state. The meetings were in the open, on the fair grounds 
or in the grove. It made some difference who spoke, but not so 
much what party he represented. Throngs would sit all after- 
noon to hear a lusty orator, and then mutually agree to go to 
" supper," come back at early candle light, and sit on hard 
benches under the trees for hours together, to enjoy the jibes 
and jokes and give the other side its fair show. 

There was no other state with the differing political situations of 
Illinois. The state is four hundred miles north and south. The 
northern boundary is farther north than Albany, and the south- 
ern point is farther south than Richmond or Louisville. The 
northern half of the state was settled from New York and New 
England, and the southern half from Virginia, Kentucky and 
Tennessee. There was a " North " and a " South " in Illinois 
as in no other state. A third of the boundary line of the state 
was bordered by slave territory. The southern part was settled 
before the northern. Indeed, the state had a rather narrow 
escape from becoming a slave state in law, and in 1858 its senti- 
ment seemed quite as much slave as free. 

Before Douglas went to Illinois for the campaign, the Dem- 
ocratic State Convention (April 21, 1858) had indorsed his 
course, but this caused a considerable number of delegates to 
withdraw, hold another convention (June 9), denounce Doug- 
las, and give adhesion to the Buchanan administration. The 
elements which were fusing into the Republican party met in 
state convention (June 17) and nominated Abraham Lincoln 
for senator. But the Republican factors were by no means 
solidly for Lincoln. Many in the state and out, even including 
Mr Greeley and the Tribune, were for the absurd political 
strategy of supporting Douglas in the hope of further embar- 
rassing the Democratic National administration. To the conven- 
tion which nominated him Lincoln made his carefully considered 



144 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

" house divided against itself " speech. He intended it to mean 
that something very decisive would have to be done. Douglas 
arrived at Chicago amidst great acclaim on July 9, and on 
that night made a speech in which he referred to Lincoln as a 
" kind, amiable, high-minded gentleman," but censured him for 
easy-going disloyalty and for benevolent short-sightedness. 
Lincoln was present and " had a good seat " as he said, and the 
next evening answered Douglas at the same place. Each of 
these men was to speak every day, and often more than once a 
day, for four months. From July until November, crowds, pro- 
cessions, cavalcades, decorations, torches, drums, feasts, oratory 
and shouting were to feature the passing days in the little towns 
and over the boundless prairies of the expansive state of Illinois. 
The intellectual battle royal in the history of American politics 
was on. 

Lincoln and Douglas presented sharp contrasts. Douglas was 
born in Vermont; Lincoln in Kentucky. Douglas was always in 
comfortable, and Lincoln in exceedingly moderate circum- 
stances. Douglas was well educated at fine old academies at 
Brandon, Vermont, and Canandaigua, New York ; Lincoln was 
self-educated. Douglas was very short and well rounded, with 
massive head; Lincoln was exceedingly tall and angular. Doug- 
las was never physically robust; Lincoln was an athlete. Doug- 
las was very free in habits of life; Lincoln was exceedingly sim- 
ple. Lincoln was modest but unyielding; Douglas was self- 
confident and aggressive. Douglas easily gained admission to 
the bar, but abandoned the practice for politics without winning 
much professional standing ; Lincoln was trying more oases at 
the circuit and arguing more appeals in the Supreme Court of 
the state than any other lawyer in Illinois. Lincoln loved state- 
craft and was expert enough in politics, but was not an office 
seeker save as he was carried along by the political interests he 
espoused. Lincoln was in office but little ; Douglas was in office 
continually. He was a member of the Legislature at twenty- 
three, a judge of the Supreme Court of the state at twenty- 
eight, a member of Congress at thirty, and a United States Sen- 
ator at thirty-three. The only places Lincoln held were in the 
Legislature from 1834 to 1842, in Congress in 1847-48, and the 
presidency. The Legislature sat for short sessions and only bi- 
ennially; the pay was practically nothing; membership was not 
looked upon as holding an office. He abjured politics for years 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 145 

together that he might earn a living at his profession. Douglas 
was a ready and fascinating political speaker and forensic orator. 
Yet it is difficult to find paragraphs in his speeches which one 
feels warranted in quoting, either for their substance or their 
style. Lincoln's speeches are practically all quotable, because 
they were filled with logical and convincing reasoning, because 
of their clarity of statement, and because they are models of a 
distinguishing and beautiful English style. 

The two men knew each other well. They lived in the same 
town for ten years. They were in the Legislature and in Con- 
gress at the same time. Douglas was transferred from the House 
of Representatives to the Senate the day that Lincoln entered 
the House for his only term in Congress. Both have declared 
that there was no personal ill will between them. They were 
good friends. The two men were of very unequal public exper- 
ience and standing. Lincoln was forty-nine years of age, and 
Douglas forty-five. Lincoln was somewhat known for character 
and ability in Illinois, but had made no impression beyond the 
state. Douglas's personal integrity and his patriotism were not 
doubted. His position in public life was above that of any other 
man of the year 1858. Six years before he had strong support 
in the national convention of his party for the presidency, and 
it was commonly assumed that he would reach that high station. 
For more than eleven years he had been in the Senate, and for 
half of that time was the preeminent leader of the great party 
which had controlled the federal government from Jefferson's 
administration. In the most painstaking address Mr Blaine 
ever delivered, the eulogy of Garfield, he said that Douglas was 
one of the three great parliamentary leaders this country has 
produced. 

Lincoln requested the joint debates. Douglas granted the re- 
quest reluctantly. Both had engagements extending through 
the entire campaign. Seven joint debates were arranged, one in 
a county town in each of the Congressional districts of the state, 
except the Chicago and Springfield districts where both had 
spoken. Douglas named the places and the debates, and stipu- 
lated that on each occasion one speaker should have an hour, 
the other an hour and a half, and then the first a half hour in 
closing, and that he himself should have the opening and the 
close at four of the seven meetings. Lincoln suggested that this 
was hardly just, but accepted the arrangement. The towns 



I46 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

were all small. Two of them were remote from railroads. All 
of the meetings were in the open air. The crowds embraced 
thousands of people, who sometimes traveled all of the night 
before to be on hand at the appointed time. Partisanship was 
rife, but the crowds were good natured and tolerant, and each 
of the speakers had a quiet hearing except as Douglas said some- 
thing like personal affront to the listeners. 

The Senator opened the debate at Ottawa by saying that 
prior to 1854 the Whig and Democratic parties were not sec- 
tional ; that they had differed about banks and money and tariffs, 
but not about slavery; that they had united in the compromise 
measures of 1850, particularly in Illinois, that none but the few 
ultra abolitionists had dissented; that in 1854 he introduced the 
Nebraska bill allowing states to decide for themselves whether 
or not they would have slavery; that thereupon Abraham Lin- 
coln and Lyman Trumbull, one a Whig and the other a Demo- 
crat, had agreed to act together in the formation of the Repub- 
lican party, for the purpose of effecting their election as United 
State senators, one to succeed General Shields in 1856, and the 
other to succeed himself in 1859. Lincoln was to bring in all the 
Whigs, and transfer them, as Douglas said, " to Giddings, Chase, 
Fred Douglass, and Parson Lovejoy," and Trumbull was to 
" bring old Democrats, 'handcuffed and bound hand and foot, 
into the abolition camp." 

He then assumed to read the platform of the first Republican 
State Convention held at Springfield in 1854, favoring separation 
from old parties and the organization of a new one ; opposing any 
extension of slavery and demanding the repeal of the Fugitive 
Slave Law. He charged Lincoln with this and wanted to know 
whether he occupied the same attitude in 1858 as in 1854. 

He made personal allusions which are worth repeating. 

"I have known him (Lincoln) for nearly twenty-five years. 
There were many points of sympathy between us when we first 
got acquainted. We were both comparatively boys, both strug- 
gling with poverty in a strange land. I was a school teacher 
in the town of Winchester, and he a flourishing grocery-keeper 
in the town of Salem. He was more successful in his occupa- 
tion than I was in mine, and hence more fortunate in this 
world's goods. Lincoln is one of those peculiar men who per- 
form with admirable skill everything which they undertake. 
I made as good a school teacher as I could, and when a cabinet- 
maker I made a good bedstead and tables, although my old 
boss said I succeeded better with bureaus and secretaries than 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 



H7 



with anything else; but I believe that Lincoln was always more 
successful in business than I, for his business enabled him to 
get into the Legislature. I met him there, however, and had 
sympathy with him, because of the uphill struggle we both had 
in life. He was then just as good at telling an anecdote as now. 
He could beat any of the boys wrestling, or running a foot race, 
in pitching quoits or tossing a copper; could ruin more liquor 
than all the boys of the town together, and the dignity and 
impartiality with which he presided at a horse race or fist fight 
excited the admiration and won the praise of everybody that 
was present and participated. I sympathized with him because 
he was struggling with difficulties, and so was I." 

He then charged Lincoln with opposing the Mexican War, 
when in Congress, and " taking the side of the common enemy 
against his country." 

He said things about Lincoln's friend, Lyman Trumbull, too, 
and alleged that Trumbull had overreached Lincoln in the sena- 
torial election of 1856, and got for himself the place which it 
had been arranged that Lincoln should have. 

He then read the famous passage from Lincoln's speech to 
the convention which nominated him for senator in June. It 
is as follows : 

" In my opinion it will not cease until a crisis shall have been 
reached and passed. _ 'A house divided against itself can not 
stand.' I believe this government can not endure permanently 
half slave and half free. I do not expect the Union to be dis- 
solved — I do not expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it 
will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all 
the other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the fur- 
ther spread of it, and place it where the public mind shall rest, 
m the belief that it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or 
its advocates will push it forward till it shall become alike law- 
ful in all the states — old as well as new, North as well as 
South." 

He insisted that this was not only absurd because the Union 
had existed part slave and part free from the beginning, but 
that it was revolutionary and would wreck the Union unless 
repudiated. 

He called Lincoln to account for "warfare on the Supreme 
Court," because its decision in the Dred Scott case deprived 
negroes " of the rights and privileges of citizenship." 
_ He argued his points with great force. His repeated allu- 
sions to " Black " Republicans stirred irritation in the audience 
which was openly expressed, but he had made a telling speech 



I48 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

and his closing - sentences against sectional warfare commanded 
general approbation. 

Mr Lincoln opened with the remark that misrepresentation 
provokes a man, but gross misrepresentation amuses him. He 
denied that he had anything to do with the platform of 1854 
which Douglas had read ; denied that there had been any agree- 
between Trumbull and himself about the senatorship ; said 
Lovejoy had tried to get him into the Republican Convention 
of 1854 but he had refused, and although they had named him 
on a committee he had had nothing to do with that organiza- 
tion. He demanded that the Judge should prove his allegations, 
and read from a speech he (Lincoln) made at Peoria in 1854 
to show that Douglas knew what his attitudes were at that time 
and misrepresented them. He disavowed any desire for " social 
and political equality with the negro,'' and suggested that a 
man who could get up a " fantastic arrangement of words " to 
prove that he had such desire might be able to prove " that a 
horse-chestnut was a chestnut horse." He said there was a 
physical difference between the races which would probably 
forbid their living together on terms of perfect equality, " but 
in the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, 
which his own hand earns, the negro is my equal, and the equal 
of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." 

He showed no resentment and made no answer to the Senator's 
unjust and probably facetious allusions to his personal career, 
further than to deny that he had kept a grocery, to observe 
that it would have been a credit to him if he had, and to volun- 
teer that he had worked for a short time " in a still, at the end 
of a hollow." It may as well be said here, that from the begin- 
ning to the end of the debates Lincoln's absolute good nature 
gave him an advantage with his hearers, while Douglas's fre- 
quent irritation cost him rather heavily. 

He appealed to the record to show that he had voted in 
Congress against approving the Mexican War but in favor of 
clothing and feeding the soldiers. 

Apparently he talked under some excitement, for at this point 
he noted that he had not consumed as much of his hour and a 
half as he had supposed, and so he turned back. Referring to 
his saying that " a house divided against itself can not stand," 
he exclaimed "Does the Judge say it can stand? If he does 
then there is a question of veracity, not between him and me, 
but between the Judge and an authority of a somewhat higher 
character." 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES I49 

He admitted that the Union had continued for eighty years 
part slave and part free, but because slavery was restricted to 
a section and was expected to disappear. The Constitution did 
not contemplate the extension of slavery into territory already 
free, and looked to the suppression of the slave trade. He urged 
that the Dred Scott case, the new Fugitive Slave Law, and par- 
ticularly Douglas's Nebraska Act, had put the " institution on 
a new basis which looks to the perpetuity and nationalization 
of slavery." 

He described " popular sovereignty " as a device which 
" would allow the people of a territory to have slavery if they 
want to, but not allow them not to have it if they do not 
want to," and showed that Douglas had refused to accept an 
amendment offered to his bill in the Senate by Chase, expressly 
empowering the people of a territory to prohibit slavery therein, 
if they saw fit. 

He took distinct issue with the decision of the Supreme Court 
in the Dred Scott case, and charged that it would be as easy 
for the court to go further and hold that even a state already 
organized could not exclude slavery without invading the im- 
plications and intentions of the federal Constitution, as to do 
what it had done. He charged collusion between the Congres- 
sional leaders and the Supreme Court, as evidenced in the Dred 
Scott decision and the Nebraska bill, in the effort to make the 
extension of slavery easy and the extension of freedom difficult. 

Let us read two or three closing paragraphs from Lincoln's 
extemporaneous speaking in this first joint debate: 

" This man sticks to a decision which forbids the people of a 
territory from excluding slavery, and he does so, not because 
he says it is right in itself — he does not give any opinion on 
that — but because it has been decided by the court, and being 
decided by the court, he is, and you are, bound to take it in 
your political action as law, not that he judges at all of its 
merits, but because a decision of the court is to him a ' Thus 
saith the Lord.' He places it on that ground alone, and you 
will bear in mind that thus committing himself unreservedly to 
this decision commits him to the next one just as firmly as to 
this. He did not commit himself on account of the merit or 
demerit of the decision, but it is a ' Thus saith the Lord.' The 
next decision, as much as this, will be a ' Thus saith the Lord.' 

" There is nothing that can divert or turn him away from this 
decision. It is nothing that I point out to him that his great 
prototype, General Jackson, did not believe in the binding force 
of decisions. It is nothing to him that Jefferson did not so 



150 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

believe. I have said that I have often heard him approve of 
Jackson's course in disregarding- the decision of the Supreme 
Court pronouncing a national bank constitutional. He says, I 
did not hear him say so. He denies the accuracy of my recol- 
lection. I say he ought to know better than I, but I will make 
no question about this thing, though it still seems to me that 
I heard him say it twenty times. I will tell him, though, that 
he now claims to stand on the Cincinnati platform, which af- 
firms that Congress can not charter a national bank, in the teeth 
of that old standing decision that Congress can charter a bank. 

"And I remind him of another piece of history on the question 
of respect for judicial decisions: and it is a piece of Illinois 
history belonging to a time when the large party to which 
Judge Douglas belonged were displeased with a decision of the 
Supreme Court of Illinois; because they had decided that a 
Governor could not remove a Secretary of State. You will find 
the whole story in Ford's History of Illinois, and I know that 
Judge Douglas will not deny that he was then in favor of over- 
slaughing that decision by the mode of adding five new judges, 
so as to vote down the four old ones. Not only so, but it ended 
in the Judge's sitting down on that very bench as one of the five nezv 
judges to break dozvn the four old ones. It was in this way pre- 
cisely that he got his title of judge. Now, when the Judge tells 
me that men appointed conditionally to sit as members of a 
court will have to be catechised beforehand upon some subject, 
I say, ' You know, Judge ; you have tried it.' When he says 
a court of this kind will lose the confidence of all men, will be 
prostituted and disgraced by such a proceeding, I say ' You know 
best, Judge; you have been through the mill.' 

" Judge Douglas is going back to the era of our Revolution, 
and, to the extent of his ability, muzzling the cannon which 
thunders its annual joyous return. When he invites any people, 
willing to have slavery, to establish it, he is blowing out the 
moral lights around us. When he says he ' cares not whether 
slavery is voted down or voted up ' — that it is a sacred right 
of self-government — he is, in my judgment, penetrating the 
human soul and eradicating the light of reason and the love 
of liberty in this American people. And now I will only say 
that when, by all these means and appliances, Judge Douglas 
shall succeed in bringing public sentiment to an exact accordance 
with his own views; when these vast assemblages shall echo 
back all these sentiments, when they shall come to repeat his 
views and to avow his principles, and to say all that he says on 
these mighty questions — then it needs only the formality of 
the second Dred Scott decision, which he indorses in advance, 
to make slavery alike lawful in all the states, old as well as 
new, North as well as South." 

Senator Douglas opened his concluding half hour by reiterat- 
ing that the Republican State Convention in 1854, with Lin- 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 



151 



coin's participation, had declared for the unconditional repeal 
of the Fugitive Slave Law. Lincoln here interrupted to inter- 
ject a denial that he had anything to do with that platform, 
and a short colloquy ensued which was more angry and disturb- 
ing, as between the men and the parties in the audience, than 
any other in the seven debates. 

The Senator made much of the fact that this Republican 
state platform in 1854 had declared (a) for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, (b) for the exclusion of 
slavery from all the territories both north and south of the 
Missouri Compromise line over which the general government 
had control, and (c) against the acquisition of any more terri- 
tory unless slavery should be forever excluded therefrom. He 
asserted that he had asked Lincoln whether as a Senator, he 
would vote to admit a state to the Union with or without 
slavery as the people of that state might decide, and declared 
that Lincoln had refused to answer. He claimed that Lincoln 
was seeking election by keeping the people in the dark as to his 
definite purposes, and was asserting or implying views upon 
these questions in northern Illinois which he would not avow 
in southern Illinois, but that he should make Lincoln refuse to 
answer in the north, and then " trot him down into ' Egypt ' " 
(as the southern part of the state was called) and make him 
refuse to answer them there. 

The Senator pronounced the charge about the collusion be- 
tween Congress and the Supreme Court " an infamous lie." He 
occupied some time in explaining the different provisions which 
were in, or which he had refused to put in, the Nebraska bill, 
and concluded by declaring that his antagonist was an aboli- 
tionist, an alarmist, a disturber, who would declare one thing 
in one place and another thing in another place only for votes, 
while he himself was seeking the independence and equality of 
sovereign states, and the concord and fraternity of the sections. 
At Freeport, six days later, Lincoln had the advantage of the 
opening and the close. He commenced by saying that Judge 
Douglas had propounded some questions to him at Ottawa, and 
then assumed that he had refused to answer them. He had not 
refused. He would answer them now if the Senator would 
agree to answer an equal number which he would like to put 
to him. He waited for Douglas to assent. Douglas did not 
assent. Then he would answer them anyway, and put his ques- 



152 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

tions to the Senator anyway. He presented the questions as 
printed in the Douglas organ since the debate and answered 
them as follows : 

" Question. 1 I desire to know whether Lincoln today stands as 
he did in 1854, in favor of the unconditional repeal of the Fugitive 
Slave Law? 

Answer. I do not now, nor ever did, stand in favor of the 
unconditional repeal of the Fugitive Slave Law. 

Q. 2 I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged 
today, as he did in 1854, against the admission of any more 
slave states into the Union, even if the people want them? 

A. I do not now, nor ever did, stand pledged against the 
admission of any more slave states into the Union. 

Q. 3 I want to know whether he stands pledged against the 
admission of a new state into the Union with such a Constitu- 
tion as the people of that state may see fit to make? 

A. I do not stand pledged against the admission of a new 
state into the Union, with such a Constitution as the people of 
that state may see fit to make. 

Q. 4 I want to know whether he stands today pledged to 
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia? 

A. I do not stand today pledged to the abolition of slavery 
in the District of Columbia. 

Q. 5 I desire him to answer whether he stands pledged to 
the prohibition of the slave trade between the different states? 

A. I do not stand pledged to the prohibition of the slave 
trade between the different states. 

Q. 6 I desire to know whether he stands pledged to prohibit 
slavery in all the territories of the United States, north as well 
as south of the Missouri Compromise line? 

A. I am impliedly, if not expressly, pledged to a belief in 
the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery in all the 
United States territories. 

Q. 7 I desire him to answer whether he is opposed to the 
acquisition of any new territory unless slavery is first prohibited 
therein? 

A. I am not generally opposed to honest acquisition of ter- 
ritory; and, in any given case, I would or would not oppose 
such acquisition, accordingly as I might think such acquisition 
would or would not aggravate the slavery question among 
ourselves." 

Observing that he had only answered that he was not pledged 
to this, that, and the other proposition, because the Judge had 
only asked if he were pledged, he expressed his willingness to go 
on and say what he thought of these matters. He thought the 
people of the South were legally entitled to a fugitive slave law 
as long as the laws of the land recognized slavery. He had 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 1 53 

objections to some of the features of the Fugitive Slave Law 
then prevailing. He would regret to have to vote upon the ad- 
mission of another slave state, and would be glad to know that 
there would never be another admitted, but if slavery should 
be kept out of a given territory until the people therein freely 
formed a Constitution recognizing slavery, he did not see how 
such a state could be rejected on that account. He would like 
to see slavery abolished in the District of Columbia and thought 
Congress had the power to abolish it, and as a Senator he would 
so vote on condition that emancipation be gradual, be sustained 
by a majority of the qualified electors, and that compensation 
should be made to unwilling owners. He said the abolition of 
the slave trade between different states was an involved legal 
question which he had not yet considered sufficiently to justify 
an ultimate opinion. If satisfied that Congress was legally com- 
petent to prohibit such trade between states, he would not vote 
to exercise the power except on conservative principles. 

Now he had some questions for the Senator. He had only 
four ready, but would have some more when he could get them 
ready. They were as follows : 

" Question, i If the people of Kansas shall, by means entirely 
unobjectionable in all other respects, adopt a State Constitution, 
and ask admission into the Union under it, before they have 
the requisite number of inhabitants according to the English 
bill — some ninety-three thousand — will you vote to admit 
them? 

Q. 2 Can the people of a United States territory, in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United States, 
exclude slavery from its limits prior to the formation of a State 
Constitution? 

Q. j If the Supreme Court of the United States shall decree 
that states can not exclude slavery from their limits, are you 
in favor of acquiescing in, adopting, and following, such decision 
as a rule of political action? 

Q. 4 Are you in favor of acquiring additional territory, in 
disregard of how such acquisition may affect the nation on the 
slavery question ? " 

After the Ottawa debate Lincoln ascertained, what he had not 
known at that time, that the platform which Douglas there presented 
as that of the Republican State Convention of 1854, and which he 
made Lincoln responsible for in spite of his denial, was not that 
of a Republican State Convention at all. Indeed, there was no 
Republican State Convention in Springfield in 1854. The resolu- 



154 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

tions had been adopted by a county convention in Kane county. 
Lincoln had nothing to do with them and had never assented to their 
provisions. Douglas was actually surprised: he had been misled. 
Lincoln now charged him with false pretenses. Douglas later de- 
nied the charge of fraud, explained his error, but insisted that the 
resolutions he had read expressed the attitudes of Lincoln's party. 
Lincoln vehemently declared that Douglas had had considerable to 
say all along about his superior knowledge of political history and 
his " conscientiousness," and lost few opportunities that presented 
themselves in the next three months to cite this incident in proof 
that the Judge did not know what he was talking about. He insisted 
that Douglas had not made his charge upon information and belief 
but as upon his own knowledge, when in reality he had no knowl- 
edge. Reminding his hearers of Douglas's charges of false pre- 
tenses against himself, and asking if they had ever discovered any- 
thing that he had said or done to compare with " that sort of vul- 
garity," he rang the changes on the Senator's " conscientiousness " 
with an industry that contributed to the gayeties of the debates, 
there and thereafter. 

Douglas now had the long speech, and he must have known, as 
well as Lincoln, the heaviness of his burden. But he shouldered it 
heroically. He addressed himself at once to Lincoln's questions. 
In relation to the admission of Kansas with an inadequate popula- 
tion, he said " if she had people enough to constitute a slave state, 
she has enough for a free state." As to the question whether he 
would acquiesce in a decision of the Supreme Court that states could 
not exclude slavery from their limits, and follow it as a rule of po- 
litical action, he was indignant. Of course he would. The Supreme 
Court was final. Lincoln should know better than to ask such a 
question. To the fourth question he said that whenever it was well 
to acquire more territory he was in favor of it without reference to 
slavery. He would leave the people free to have slavery or not as 
they pleased. 

Lincoln's second question at Freeport, as to whether Douglas held 
that the people of a territory could in any lawful zvay exclude 
slavery before the formation of a State Constitution, was the merci- 
less one. It was doubtless intended to bear upon the Senator's 
presidential prospects. When the Supreme Court held that Con- 
gress could not exclude slavery from a territory, it followed that 
the people of the territory could not do it either. Was there any 
zvay under our system in which free territories could be kept free? 
The North would not stand for the man who said no, nor the South 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 1 55 

for the man who said yes. One in the Senator's situation needed 
the help of a multiplicity of strange gods to balance the contingencies 
and contribute to the confusion of the popular mind. His reply 
was ingenious but necessarily inadequate. He said there was no 
constitutional or legal way, but slavery could not exist among a 
people who were opposed to it, because of the police regulations 
their Legislatures might make. In other words, they could not law- 
fully prohibit or prevent it, but they could freeze it out. The sub- 
stance of the answer was with slavery and the South, but not suf- 
ficiently so to be satisfying to the South. It was unsatisfying and 
disconcerting in the North. 

The Senator had much to say in explanation of what Lincoln 
called the fraudulent platform, and more about social and political 
equality with negroes, but the substance of his address was in 
answer to Lincoln's questions. 

Lincoln's reply was rather dignified raillery, which must have 
entertained the audience and annoyed his antagonist, but it added 
little that was new to the substance of the debate. His real work 
of the day was in the questions he had carefully prepared. 

The third debate, at Jonesboro, nearly three weeks later, was 
in the far southern part of the state. The sentiment was strongly 
southern. The speakers traversed much of the ground gone over 
at Ottawa and Freeport. The Senator played upon southern feel- 
ings very adroitly, ridiculing the abolitionists, classing Lincoln with 
the most ultra of them, and calling upon him to say the same things 
in the South that he had at the North. 

Lincoln responded to the call very exactly. Saying that the 
fathers had made the best Constitution they could have made under 
the circumstances, that slavery was a vicious institution and would 
have died out, as the fathers expected, if the laws had been left as 
the fathers made them, he asserted that the laws had been changed 
by the Supreme Court and Douglas so as to fetter freedom and let 
slavery go where it would. Declaring for peace, he insisted that 
there had been concord between the sections until the movement to 
extend slavery. 

He ridiculed the Senator's suggestion that slavery could be pre- 
vented by the exercise of police powers. He recalled that when 
one is elected to the Legislature he swears to support the Consti- 
tution of the United States, and inquired if it would not be false 
swearing to do that and then vote for laws to subvert the intentions 
of the Constitution as declared by the Supreme Court? Is not 



I56 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

Congress bound to give effect to the intentions of the Constitution, 
and is not the Supreme Court bound to overthrow police regulations 
that are inimical to the Constitution? 

Then he propounded his fifth formal interrogatory to Douglas, 
thus: 

" If the slaveholding citizens of a United States territory should 
need and demand Congressional legislation for the protection 
of their slave property in such territory, would you, as a mem- 
ber of Congress, vote for or against such legislation?" 

Douglas answered this question by saying that he thought there 
should be no interference by Congress with slavery in the states or 
territories alike. 

There were great and fantastic processions across the prairies to 
Charleston on the 15th of September. 

It was in his opening at Charleston that Lincoln let slip the re- 
mark that has been so well remembered, " I do not understand that 
because I do not want a negro woman for a slave I must necessarily 
want her for a wife." He then led Douglas a long chase about 
Douglas's criticisms of Senator Trumbull, and Douglas used his 
hour and a half sustaining his contentions about Trumbull. Lincoln 
was apparently willing that the Senator should use his time about 
collateral and not very material matters in a debate where Lincoln 
had the last speech. By this time he was actually playing with the 
Judge. Having put Douglas to much reiteration and even to the 
extreme of talking about liars, Lincoln covered the old ground 
rather carefully and closed the debate with the words, " I say to him 
that it will not avail him at all that he swells himself up, takes on 
dignity, and calls people liars. If you have ever studied geometry, 
you remember that by a course of reasoning Euclid proves that all 
the angles in a triangle are equal to two right angles. Now would 
you prove that to be false by calling Euclid a liar ? " 

The fifth joint debate, October 7th, was on the campus of Knox 
College at Galesburg. The place and the people seem to have made 
the discussion particularly serious. Douglas used the opening hour 
in condemning Lincoln for thinking that when the Declaration of 
Independence asserted that " all men are created equal," it in- 
cluded black men as well as white men and referred to social and 
political equality ; as well as for arraying the sections against each 
other and for pretending different beliefs in different places. There 
was nothing new in this, but apparently the vehemence of it forced 
Lincoln to higher ground than he had before taken. He said the 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 1 57 

records of the country would be searched in vain to show that 
before Judge Douglas and the present campaign, any one had ever 
asserted that the Declaration of Independence did not include black 
men. Neither Washington, Jefferson, nor any other president, nor 
any member of Congress, including Douglas himself, had ever said 
that until present extremities forced the Judge to say it. He asserted 
that all of his own speeches in the present debates, in the South as 
well as in the North, had been put in print, and he knew that no 
conflicts could be found in them. He had tolerated slavery, and 
had never contended for the abstract right to abolish slavery where 
it already existed; but when slavery tried to enter new territory 
freedom was bound to stand fast. The practical necessity for it 
had been contended for in the Southern States, and partly and re- 
luctantly acquiesced in in the Northern States, but the theoretical 
wrong of slavery had always been admitted, North and South. Now 
political exigency was forcing Douglas, he said, to deny the moral 
wrong of it. Here are two brief but illuminating paragraphs : 

"Everything that emanates from him (Douglas) or his coad- 
jutors in their course of policy carefully excludes the thought 
that there is anything wrong in slavery. All their arguments, 
if you will consider them, will be seen to exclude the thought 
that there is anything wrong in slavery. If you will take the 
Judge's speeches, and select the short and pointed sentences 
expressed by him — as his declaration that he ' don't care 
whether slavery is voted up or down' — you will see at once 
that this is perfectly logical, if you do not admit that slavery 
is wrong. If you do admit that it is wrong, Judge Douglas can 
not logically say he don't care whether a wrong is voted up 
or down. 

" Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the coun- 
try who contemplate slavery as a moral, social, and political 
evil, having due regard for its actual existence amongst us and 
the difficulties of getting rid of it in any satisfactory way, and 
to all the constitutional obligations which have been thrown 
about it ; but, nevertheless, I desire a policy that looks to the 
prevention of it as a wrong, and looks hopefully to the time 
when as a wrong it may come to an end." 

He quoted the assertion in the prevailing opinion in the Dred 
Scott case that " the right of property in a slave is distinctly and 
expressly affirmed in the Constitution," and repudiated it with un- 
equaled logic and force. Of course the decision of the Supreme 
Court was to be observed so long as it remained the law, but there 
was no reason why it should be accepted as a permanent rule of 
political action. The people had the right to make their own en- 



I58 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

during rules of political action by amending Constitutions, by en- 
acting laws, or even by changing courts. He charged the Senator 
with striving to prepare the public mind for a yet more sweeping 
and objectionable decision of the Court, and exclaimed: 

" He is blowing out the moral lights around us, when he con- 
tends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them ; 
he is penetrating, so far as lies in his power, the human soul, and 
eradicating the light of reason and the love of liberty, when 
he is in every possible way preparing the public mind, by his vast 
influence, for making the institution of slavery perpetual and. 
national." 

The Senator's final half hour was spent in grieving over Lincoln's 
construction of the Declaration of Independence and in repining 
over his appeals from the decision of the Supreme Court to the 
political hustings and the town meetings of the country. 

At Quincy, six days after Galesburg, Lincoln evidenced his 
thought that the debate transcended the mere election of a senator 
in Illinois, and related to a question which concerned the very life 
of the nation and would have to be determined by all of the people 
of the country. He suggested that the question was moral and 
political rather than personal, and resented some personal strictures 
which the Senator had made upon him. " I was not sure that I 
should be able to hold my own with him. He asks if I wish to push 
this matter to the point of personal difficulty. I tell him no. He 
made no mistake when he called me an ' amiable man,' though per- 
haps he did when he called me an ' intelligent ' man. I very much 
prefer when this canvass is over, however it may result, that we 
part without any bitter recollections of personal difficulties. But I 
shall not ask any favors. I will not be the first to cry ' hold.' " 

His evident annoyance inspired some of his finest sentences, 
which deserve to be repeated here : 

" We have in this nation this element of domestic slavery. It 
is a disturbing element. We keep up a controversy in regard 
to it. The difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, 
is no other than the difference between men who think slavery 
wrong and those who do not think it wrong. We think it a 
moral, a social, and a political wrong. It is a wrong that ex- 
tends itself to the existence of the whole nation. Because we 
think it wrong we deal with it as a wrong. W r e deal with it 
as with any other wrong, by preventing it growing larger, so 
that in the course of time there may be some promise of an 
end of it. We have a due regard to the actual presence of it 
amongst us. I suppose that, in reference to our constitutional 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 1 59 

obligations, we have no right to disturb it in the states where 
it exists, and we have no more inclination to disturb it than 
we have the right to do. When Dred Scott has been decided 
to be a slave by the Court we, a mob, shall not decide him to 
be free. When any other one, or one thousand, shall be decided 
by the Court to be slaves, we shall not in any violent way dis- 
turb the rights of property thus settled. But we do not pro- 
pose to be bound by it as a political rule in any way, because 
it lays the foundation for the spread of an evil. We propose 
to have it reversed if we can, and a new rule established upon 
this subject. 

" If there is any man who does not believe slavery is wrong, 
he ought to leave us. If there is any man in my party who is 
impatient of the constitutional guarantees thrown around it, 
and would act in disregard to these, he too, is misplaced. Judge 
Douglas never says slavery is right or wrong. Almost every 
one else says one thing or the other, but he never does. He 
can not say that he ' don't care whether slavery is voted up or 
voted down ' if he admits that slavery is wrong." 

Senator Douglas returned to personalities. Declaring what two 
men had said, he exclaimed, " No man on earth who knows them 
and knows Lincoln, would take his oath as against their word." He 
charged that the Dred Scott case was a feigned issue for political 
purposes ; that the negro was owned by an abolition member of 
Congress from Springfield, Mass. ; and that both sides in court 
were represented by abolition lawyers. Assuming to restate 
Lincoln's views about negro rights and classing him with the ex- 
treme abolitionists, he exclaimed, " Did old Giddings when he came 
down among you four years ago preach more radical abolitionism 
than this ? Did Lovejoy or Lloyd Garrison, or Wendell Phillips, or 
Fred Douglass ever take higher abolition ground than that? " The 
fact is Douglas was being worn out. The long continued abrasion 
was telling. He was a great man, but he was contending with a 
matchless one. He lacked the equable temperament, the intellectual 
equipoise, the physical endurance of Lincoln. But happily he was 
experienced and ingenious and strong enough to put Lincoln to his 
best. Here are two paragraphs which are good samples of Doug- 
las's contentions and his style: 

" He tells you that I will not argue the question whether 
slavery is right or wrong. I tell you why I will not do it. I 
hold that, under the Constitution of the United States, each 
state of this Union has a right to do as it pleases on the subject 
of slavery. In Illinois we have exercised that sovereign right 
by prohibiting slavery within our own limits. I approve of that 
line of policy. We have performed our whole duty in Illinois. 



l6o NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

We have gone as far as we have a right to go under the Con- 
stitution of our common country. It is none of our business 
whether slavery exists in Missouri or not. Missouri is a sov- 
ereign state of this Union, and has the same right to decide 
the slavery question for herself that Illinois has to decide it for 
herself. Hence I do not choose to occupy the time allotted to 
me in discussing a question that we have no right to act upon. 
" He tells you that he does not like the Dred Scott decision. 
Suppose he does not, how is" he going to help himself? He 
says that he will reverse it. How will he reverse it? I know 
of but one mode of reversing judicial decisions, and that is by 
appealing from the inferior to the superior court. But I have 
never yet learned how or where an appeal could be taken from 
the Supreme Court of the United States. The Dred Scott de- 
cision was pronounced by the highest tribunal on earth. From 
that decision there is no appeal, this side of Heaven. Yet, Mr 
Lincoln says he is going to reverse that decision. By what 
tribunal will he reverse it? Will he appeal to a mob? Does 
he intend to appeal to violence, to lynch law? Will he stir up 
strife and rebellion in the land, and overthrow the court by 
violence? He does not deign to tell you how he will reverse 
the Dred Scott decision, but keeps appealing each day from the 
Supreme Court of the United States to political meetings in the 
country." 

Lincoln was ready with his answer, and here is a paragraph of it : 

"But he (Douglas) is desirous of knowing how we are going 
to reverse the Dred Scott decision. Judge Douglas ought to 
know how. Did not he and his political friends find a way to 
reverse the decision of that same Court in favor of the con- 
stitutionality of the national bank? Didn't they find a way to 
do it so effectually that they have reversed it as completely as 
any decision ever was reversed, so far as its practical operation 
is concerned? And let me ask you, didn't Judge Douglas find 
a way to reverse the decision of our Supreme Court when it 
decided that Carlin's father — old Governor Carlin — had not 
the constitutional power to remove a Secretary of State? Did he 
not appeal to the " MOBS," as he calls them? Did he not make 
speeches in the lobby to show how villainous that decision was, 
and how it ought to be overthrown? Did he not succeed, too, 
in getting an act passed by the Legislature to have it over- 
thrown? And didn't he himself sit down on that bench as one 
of the five added judges, who were to overslaugh the four old 
ones, getting his name of Judge in that way, and no other? If 
there is a villainy in using disrespect or making opposition to 
Supreme Court decisions, I commend it to Judge Douglas's 
earnest consideration. I know of no man in the State of 
Illinois who ought to know so well about how much villainy it 
takes to oppose a decision of the Supreme Court as our honor- 
able friend Stephen A. Douglas." 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES l6l 

In opening the final debate, at Alton, October 15, Senator Douglas 
advanced nothing new beyond a bitter lamentation and criticism of 
President Buchanan's opposition to him. Here it is : 

" In this State, every postmaster, every route agent, every col- 
lector of the ports, and every federal officeholder forfeits his 
head the moment he expresses a preference for the Democratic 
candidates against Lincoln and his abolition associates. A 
Democratic administration which we helped to bring into power 
deems it consistent with its fidelity to principle and its regard 
to duty to wield its power in this state in behalf of the Repub- 
lican abolition candidates in every county and every Con- 
gressional district against the Democratic party. All I have to 
say in reference to the matter is, that if that administration 
have not regard enough for principle, if they are not sufficiently 
attached to the creed of the Democratic party, to bury forever 
their personal hostilities in order to succeed in carrying out our 
glorious principles, I have. I have no personal difficulty with 
Mr Buchanan or his Cabinet. He chose to make certain 
recommendations to Congress, as he had a right to do, on the 
Lecompton question. I could not vote in favor of them. I had 
as much right to judge for myself how I should vote as he had 
how he should recommend. He undertook to say to me, ' If 
you do not vote as I tell you, I will take off the heads of your 
friends.' I replied to him, ' You did not elect me. I represent 
Illinois, and I am accountable to Illinois, to my constituency, 
and to God; but not to the President or to any other power on 
earth.' " 

Lincoln's commendation of this was not delayed. Here that is : 

" This is the seventh time Judge Douglas and myself have met 
in these joint discussions, and he has been gradually improving 
in regard to his war with the administration. At Quincy, day 
before yesterday, he was a little more severe upon the adminis- 
tration than I had heard him upon any occasion, and I took 
pains to compliment him for it. I then told him to ' Give it to 
them with "all the power he had ' ; and as some of them were 
present, I told them I would be very much obliged if they would 
give it to him in about the same way. I take it he has now vastly 
improved upon the attack he made then upon the administration. 
I flatter myself he has really taken my advice on this subject. 
All I can say now is to recommend to him and to them what I 
then commended — to prosecute the war against one another in 
the most vigorous manner. I say to them again : ' Go it, hus- 
band ! Go it, bear ! ' 

"There is one other thing I will mention before I leave this 
branch of the discussion — although I do not consider it much 
of my business, anyway. I refer to that part of the Judge's 
remarks where he undertakes to invoke Mr Buchanan in an in- 



l62 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

consistency. He reads something from Mr Buchanan, from 
which he undertakes to involve him in an inconsistency; and he 
gets something of a cheer for having done so. I would only 
remind the Judge that while he is very valiantly fighting for the 
Nebraska bill and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, it has 
been but a little while since he was the valiant advocate of the 
Missouri Compromise. I want to know if Buchanan has not as 
much right to be inconsistent as Douglas has? Has Douglas 
the exclusive right, in this country of being on all sides of all 
questions? Is nobody allowed that high privilege but himself? 
Is he to have an entire monopoly on that subject? " 

With so much for fun he proceeded to sum up. There was no 
suggestion of rhetoric or oratory. He used no studied phrases and 
attempted no climax. He was much in earnest, and allowed nothing 
that was material to escape him. He said, in brief and in sub- 
stance, that the fact that the founders of the Republic forbade 
slavery in organizing the Northwest Territory - — all of the land 
controlled in common at that time — and also provided for the ex- 
tinction of the slave trade in twenty years, was significant of their 
understanding and their purpose. They were cutting off the supply 
of slaves on the one side and prohibiting the spread of slavery on the 
other. The only ground for that was the common assumption that 
slavery was an evil and a wrong. The only meaning of it was that 
the evil should remain localized. The manifest hope of it was that 
the slave system would be extinguished. With that understanding 
and purpose and hope, the nation had endured. That understand- 
ing had now been thwarted. It had been done by force and threats. 
The men who had thwarted it were the aggressors and disturbers. 
The slave system itself had been content with extensions by piece- 
meal as the population had advanced and new Southern States were 
organized. Now Judge Douglas, the great leader of a great party, 
had provided in the Nebraska bill that it might go everywhere, North 
as well as South, and for all time. The same political party was 
dominant in the three branches of the government, and all three 
were promoting all this or acquiescing in it. It must arouse the 
national conscience. It menaced the national unity. It was be- 
ginning to look as though the movement had already gone so far 
that it would have to go on to its conclusions or be utterly repudiated 
or destroyed. It was quite apparent now that the nation would 
eventually become all slave or all free. It might be so very soon. 
The nation could not endure if slavery were to be perpetuated and 
nationalized. The possibility of it was already dividing the great 
moral agencies of the nation, as was evidenced by the cleavage in 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES 163 

the Methodist Church, by the disturbance in the General Assemblies 
of the Presbyterian and Unitarian Churches, and by the splitting 
open of the American Tract Society. He would have been content 
to acquiesce in the work of the fathers, if the slave system had re- 
spected their work. He was for peace, but the overthrow of the pur- 
pose and hope of the fathers, that slavery should remain localized 
so long as it continued, and should finally cease, was destroying the 
possibility of unity and of peace. He had never been an abolitionist. 
He recognized the legal right of property in slaves and would not 
destroy it unless by conservative methods and through the com- 
pensation of owners. He was not for interfering with the legal 
powers of states. If any of the slave states wanted to become free 
states, he was for letting them do it. None of the old states that 
were free states wanted to become slave states. The trouble was 
in the territories, and the territories were the common property of 
all. Whether they were to become free or slave was necessarily a 
national question, and being a moral question also it went to the 
perpetuity of the nation itself. And as Judge Douglas and the 
Supreme Court had forced that question upon the nation, it must 
be met now. 

It could not be met by leaving it to the territories to decide for 
themselves. Judge Douglas had been arranging it so that slavery 
would have the advantage of freedom in new territory. Freemen 
did not want to go to a new country where there was any possibility 
of slavery, and would remain away unless freedom was assured. 
Lincoln was for fixing it so that liberty-loving men from all parts 
of the world — Hans and Baptiste and Patrick — could come and 
go to our territories and be sure that freedom would reign there. 
It was absurd to pretend that through the police power " a thing 
may be lawfully driven away from a place where it has a lawful 
right to go." But all that, and the talk about negro equality, and the 
menace of strife between free states and slave states, was subordi- 
nate in any event. The real question was a moral one which went 
to the very life of the nation, and the nation would have to assume 
the responsibility of meeting it, and probably very soon. 

Douglas's reply traversed the beaten paths in the usual way. His 
final words were: 

"All you have a right to ask is that the people shall do as they 
please: if they want slavery, let them have it; if they do not 
want it, allow them to refuse to encourage it. 

" My friends, if, as I have said before, we will only live up to 
this great fundamental principle, there will be peace between the 



164 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

North and the South. Mr Lincoln admits that, under the Con- 
stitution, on all domestic questions, except slavery, we ought not 
to interfere with the people of each state. What right have we 
to interfere with slavery any more than we have to interfere 
with any other question? He says that this slavery question 
is now the bone of contention. Why? Simply because agi- 
tators have combined in all the free states to make war upon it. 
Suppose the agitators in the states should combine in one half 
of the Union to make war upon the railroad system of the other 
half? They would thus be driven to the same sectional strife. 
Suppose one section makes war upon any other peculiar institu- 
tion of the opposite section, and the same strife is produced. 
The only remedy and safety is that we shall stand by the Con- 
stitution as our fathers made it, obey the laws as they are passed, 
while they stand the proper test, and sustain the decisions of the 
Supreme Court and the constituted authorities." 

The joint debates were over. In the thousands attending, in the 
general good nature, in the newspaper comments and discussions, 
in- the moral and political education of the masses, they had been 
eminently successful. They had been serious. Neither of the 
speakers had related an anecdote in the twenty-one hours of joint 
and popular discussion. Whatever the result of the election, it 
was evident that it would be big with fate. It was evident too that 
American freedom had developed a wise prophet and found a 
valiant knight. 

Election day and the several days preceding it were marked by 
incessant rains. One who has not experienced it will not appreciate 
what days of rain upon the rich black soil of Illinois will do. The 
mud was without bottom. Many were unable to vote. When the 
returns were in Douglas and Buchanan together had fourteen 
senators and forty representatives, and Lincoln eleven senators and 
thirty-five representatives. But Lincoln had a decisive popular 
majority. The legislative districts were so laid out that the Lincoln 
representative districts had an average population of 19,635, and 
the Douglas districts 15,675, while the Lincoln senatorial districts 
averaged 58,900 people and the Douglas districts 47,100. If the 
representation had been equalized, Lincoln would have been elected. 
Douglas had won the senatorship, but he had lost the presidency. 
His state, which had never before cast its electoral vote for any 
other than the party of Douglas, was to throw its electoral vote for 
Lincoln and against Douglas at the next election. 

Before these debates Lincoln had not been seriously considered 
for the presidency. The St Louis Republican of June 24, 1858, re- 
ports a straw vote for the Republican candidate for president, among 



THE LINCOLN-DOUGLAS DEBATES T65 

the delegates and others on a train to the State Convention that 
nominated Lincoln " as its first, last and only choice " for senator, 
as follows: Seward 139, Fremont 32, McLean 13, Trumbull 7, 
Giase 6. There was none for Lincoln. But he was thought of 
enough immediately after the election which settled the senatorship. 
Indeed, every student of American politics must know that his 
nomination by the Republican party for president was logical and 
almost inevitable. 

The election of Lincoln to the presidency necessarily committed 
the executive administration of the nation to his views, his legal 
reasoning, and his political attitudes. The South understood it 
perfectly. Her situation made revolution inevitable. War was 
certain unless Lincoln failed. He was the one man in the nation 
who most wanted peace and who best knew that war was at hand. 
He pleaded that the bonds of friendship be not broken. But he had 
sworn to execute the laws and protect the property of the United 
States, and of course he would do it. Of course there would be 
resistance. Of course that meant war. 

Lincoln's legal reasoning halted the slave system at the borders of 
free territory. Then his mind extended or constructed a basis of 
law for meeting the insurrection which resulted and for prosecuting 
the war to a successful culmination. He wavered not at all. With 
anguish of soul, he evolved legal theory and exercised unusual 
powers as the quickly moving events required. That theory, and 
those events, put him quickly in command of millions of freemen 
armed for the saving of the Union. In the awful conflict all possi- 
bility of compromise or neutrality disappeared. If the Union lived 
slavery would have to go. If the Union were dissevered, slavery 
would triumph after being abolished in every other form of govern- 
ment formed and directed by Saxon and Teuton peoples. 
Democracy would be dishonored. Lincoln strained legal theory 
and exercised his executive powers to their limit. It made him an 
abolitionist and the Great Emancipator. Legal theory, and political 
policy, and military force, definitely and distinctly combined with 
moral principle to bring the nation that was near to death, back to 
life. " Union and Liberty " survived. 

We can not leave the subject without a kindly thought of 
Douglas. True, he made a political mistake which changed the 
course of his country's history. True, freedom had the right to 
expect that one born and trained as he was should take other than 
a neutral course upon the extension of slavery. But his short- 



1 66 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

comings were incidental. He was a great figure the night that he 
rose in the Senate, half an hour before midnight, and spoke until 
the rays of the sun broke over the Capitol, in closing the argument 
upon his Nebraska bill. The fundamental principle of his bill was 
unsound, but it is not given to all men to know that there are times 
when a middle course is not enough. He was struggling, amid the 
portending clouds, with the contending forces of a great party and 
the gathering perils of a great national crisis. We are sorry that he 
took a middle course. We can but wish that he had stood firmly for 
the intuitions that the Green Mountain State and the Empire State 
must have planted in him. We can not fail to wonder what it 
might have brought to him — possibly the presidency, certainly the 
deeper regard of a country destined to become wholly free. But 
when he held Lincoln's hat at the inauguration, and when his last 
words were " There can be no neutrals in this war," we must de- 
clare the basic attributes of sincerity and patriotism which filled 
his soul. 

And we do it with more pleasure when we recall that the course 
of Douglas brought to the headship of the nation the " malice 
towards none," the " charity for all," the " firmness in the right 
as God gives us to see the right," the broad and deep human sym- 
pathy, the legal learning, the unrivaled gift of statement, the per- 
spective which placed the Union above all else, the statesmanship 
that rose above all partisanship, and the commanding genius which 
could lead the Republic through the Red sea ; for these were the 
great attributes of Abraham Lincoln. 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION 1 
Remarks and motion of Vice Chancellor McKelway 

Gentlemen of the Board of Regents: Before we proceed to any- 
other business at this meeting, I wish to provide for the orderly 
progress of our transactions for future years. My intention is to 
ask the Board to elect a Commissioner of Education to serve dur- 
ing the pleasure of the Board, and I shall nominate Dr Andrew S. 
Draper to succeed himself. 

I know this is the unanimous intention of the Board, and the 
unanimous desire of the universities, academies, common schools, 
and of all the bodies whatever in any way affected by an interest 
in education or by a responsibility for it, in our Commonwealth. I 
know also that Dr Draper's election will confirm the expectation of 
every state in our Union and of every nation abroad with which we 
officially have educational relations of any kind. 

This is Dr Draper's first election by us. It is his reelection, how- 
ever, to this office. Six years ago he was elected to the office by 
the Legislature and the law prescribed that, after his first term, 
the Board of Regents should itself choose his successors. That 
method of procedure was wise when it was adopted. It signal- 
ized the effected unification of our state educational system. It 
substituted unity for duality, and harmony for inherent liabilities 
of discord, division and like factors of friction. The prescribed 
system and the prescribed man to be its executive have got along 
well together. The Board of Regents can claim that their choice 
of the Commissioner for a life term is a vindication of the first 
choice of him for this office by the Legislature and of the action of 
the Legislature in its investment of us with the choice of future 
commissioners. 

I should like to say many things in merited eulogy of Dr Draper's 
administration, but our unanimous designation of him for life will 
substitute vindication for praise, and action speaks louder and tells 
longer than words. I am restrained from tribute because he is in 
our presence, and does not like being praised when he is around. 
I am further restrained because when we praise his administration 
we praise ourselves as a part of it. Praise to the face is the first 
line of a rhymed couplet I would not even suggest, and praise of 
ourselves can well be outwardly omitted, no matter how much we 
may inwardly feel it is deserved. 

1 Reprinted from Journal of Regents Meeting, March 31, 1910. 



l68 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

I will be excused from more than saying that we are content to 
let Dr Draper be judged by his record, and ourselves to be judged 
by our continuance of him and by our identification with him in the 
educational work of the state. He has been faithful, industrious, 
untiring, wise, firm, conservative, patient, tactful, just, and sanely 
progressive. Less should not, and more, when fully interpreted, 
could not be said of him, and naught better can be said of us, if it 
can be said that we have been, or have sought to be, as true to his 
best intendments as he has been to our best intendments in the 
cognate work the state has required of ourselves and of him. 

Gentlemen, I nominate Dr Draper for State Commissioner of 
Education, and await your further pleasure. 

Remarks of Regent Pliny T. Sexton 

Mr Vice Chancellor: You have with such felicitous phrase and 
fitting feeling spoken, as I feel sure, the thoughts of all of 
us, that added words can be but those of needless iteration. But 
yet, husbands and wives delight to tell, over and over, of their love 
for each other, and the more so, perhaps, the more sure they feel 
of their mutual affection. And I am glad to avail myself of the 
privilege, which my relative seniority in this Board may allow me, 
of being the first to second the nomination of the Hon. Andrew S. 
Draper for reelection as Commissioner of Education of the State 
of New York. 

In some countries where freedom is less understood and freedom 
of action less known than in ours, marriages are often made for 
people, and not by them. They are brought together as compara- 
tive strangers and have to learn to love and trust each other after- 
ward, if at all. And, continuing a little the simile of the marriage 
relation, I may say that the union between Commissioner Draper 
and the Board of Regents was not, in its origin, one of mutual 
agreement. It was forced upon us by an act of the Legislature 
which did not have our approval. We met him after our legislative 
marriage, six years ago, with minds full of questioning, on our part, 
and doubtless he had thoughts of uncertainty and apprehension. 
But his frankness of speech, cordiality of spirit, and evident large 
mindedness and singleness of purpose to devote himself and all 
of his manifested great powers to the promotion of the educational 
welfare of this state, cleared the atmosphere and won us to him 
at once. As he then revealed himself to us, we realized his eminent 
fitness for his place, and I said to myself, at the close of that first 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATON 169 

meeting, " There is a man to stand by, and I am going to stand by 
him." Such, I believe, was the impression which he made upon 
us all, and it has been abundantly justified. 

The Legislature did not, by its enactment of 1904, unify the edu- 
cational system of the state. It stopped far short of that. It left 
the door open for possibly greater abuses and dissensions than had 
before prevailed. But, by a compact made at that first meeting be- 
tween the Commissioner of Education and the Board of Regents 
— a compact which would have been impossible with a man of 
less greatness of thought and sincerity of purpose — the actual 
educational unification which thoughtful educators had so long 
prayerfully hoped for became an accomplished fact and has since 
existed as an immeasurable blessing to the people of this Common- 
wealth. 

We have learned to love and trust Commissioner Draper, since 
our official marriage with him. We have come to feel that he is 
entitled to our unquestioning confidence and admiration, not only 
as to his sincerity of purpose, but as to his great, almost un- 
paralleled capacity for the special duty in life to which he has been 
called. 

I do not regard the action we are about to take on this occasion, 
except in a formal or technical sense, as his reelection. Rather, 
we are here today to reaffirm, gladly, the vows of unity with him 
which we plighted six years ago with no little trepidation. The 
union then begun has come to be regarded as providentially ar- 
ranged and, borrowing from the church a ritualistic phrase — bene- 
dictive words — I would say, " Those whom God hath joined to- 
gether let no man put asunder." 

Remarks of Regent Albert Vander Veer 

Mr Vice Chancellor, may I be permitted to occupy just a moment? 
I want to say that it gives me great pleasure to speak of the loyal 
atmosphere that I know prevails within the walls of this building 
toward one who has been our executive officer and for whom we 
have this morning demonstrated our loyalty and affection, as has 
been mentioned in the nomination by the Vice Chancellor and in 
the seconding of the same by Regent Sexton. 

I wish, Mr Vice Chancellor, to refer to one sentence in your re- 
marks — " We have to confirm the expectation of our sister states." 
It has been my good fortune during the past few months in hotel 
drawing-rooms to talk of our educational institutions in this state, 



170 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

with men of other states, and in every instance there has been a 
ready and cordial reference to the excellent work that is being 
done in this state, and especially to that done by the Commissioner 
of Education. I only wish to add these few words in seconding 
this nomination. 

Thereupon Vice Chancellor McKelway announced that a ballot 
upon the question of the choice of a Commissioner of Education 
would be had and appointed Regents Shedden and Carpenter to re- 
ceive and record the ballot. After the ballot had been taken Vice 
Chancellor McKelway announced that each Regent present had 
voted and that each vote cast was for Dr Andrew S. Draper for 
Commissioner of Education. He also announced that all of the 
Regents who were unavoidably absent from the meeting had ex- 
pressed a desire to have their intentions and preferences for the 
election of Dr Draper recorded in the minutes. 

Response of the Commissioner of Education 

Gentlemen of the Board of Regents: The remarks of Vice Chan- 
cellor McKelway and of Regents Sexton and Vander Veer, as well 
as the messages from all absent members, not even excepting Chan- 
cellor Reid, the Ambassador of the United States to Great Britain, 
have touched me deeply. The evident sincerity and the entire 
unanimity of these expressions give new charm and value to the 
one treasure that is of most worth in life or that can long endure 
after death. 

Knowing that your protestations are genuine, I can not seem to 
be unaware that they are overgenerous. The fact is that we are 
more than officials ; we are friends. The law and the Legislature 
brought us together. Neither of us promoted the passage of the 
law or prompted the course of the Legislature in electing the Com- 
missioner of Education. It was because New York meant so much 
to me, and because I could refuse nothing that she would ask, that 
I again accepted her commission. But it was accepted with appre- 
hension. Both before and after the beginning of the term there 
were days when I was sorry the responsibility had not gone to an- 
other. The two departments that were to be unified were hostile 
camps, and tense feeling extended to all parts of the state. Even 
you and I could not interpret the new statute to mean the same 
things. But the responsibility and the opportunity steadied us. It 
would be humiliating to have the supreme effort of the state for 
educational unity end in worse confusion than before. It would 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATON 171 

mean much to effect what the state had hoped for in vain for an 
hundred years. We talked soberly and earnestly. We drew upon 
all the sense we had. We gathered all of our legal powers together 
and reassigned them upon a plan that was workable because logical 
and sane. We entered into a troth. For six years the orderly and 
efficient procedure of the greatest public educational organization in 
America has rested upon that compact. 

I have never before worked with a board to whose meetings I 
looked forward with anticipations of such unmixed pleasure. You 
have given me your confidence and you have had mine. You have 
kept nothing from me, and while I can not mention everything that 
transpires in the Department, I have kept from you nothing which, 
if I were in your places, I would think I ought to know. We ap- 
proached our task from experiences that were unlike and from 
points of view that were often opposed. The organization has been 
the stronger for that. Since getting started we have had little ap- 
prehension because we knew that men who were not self-seeking 
could settle mere differences of thought in quiet discussion about 
the council board. We have had these discussions, often and in 
earnest, but you have never had to put a divided vote upon the 
record, and we have never been in sight of the point of personal 
estrangement, or anywhere in the realm of danger to the high trusts 
committed to our care. So we have tried each other out. That 
has enabled us to agree upon a general revision of the Education 
Law which is well on its way through the Legislature and which 
promises to make all that we have done secure. 1 Out of our ex- 
periences, respect and regard and success have grown. It is that 
which makes your expressions concerning me overgenerous, and 
creates the possibility of your giving me credit which belongs to 
yourselves and to others. 

In accepting and thanking you for the indefinite extension of 
my commission, as I do, I thank you even more for the encourage- 
ment, the abstinence from all that could embarrass me, and all of 
the delightful personal relations that have preceded, have led up 
to, and are associated with it. It is a boon to have the health and 
the capacity and the desire for work, no matter what the work may 
be. It is a distinct opportunity in life to be privileged to do such 
work as this, and with such men. For it I thank you with all my 
heart. 

It would be absurd to assume that any of us or all of us monopo- 
lize the credit for this excellent work. There are many men and 

1 This bill became a law April 22, 19 10. 



172 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

women in the Education Department, and more in both official 
and private station in every city and town in the state, who have 
had their share in the burden and are entitled to an undivided part 
in the credit of it. 

Passing from the more personal to the more public aspects of 
the situation, it must be said that the election of a Commissioner 
of Education by the Board of Regents signalizes the consummation 
of the legal scheme of educational unification in New York which 
was decreed in the statute of 1904. It does more : It marks the 
end of an old order and completes the inauguration of a new. In 
infinite ways the old order brought strength, power and distinction 
to the state, but we will fondly believe that the new order will 
be firmer in its structure than the old, and will bring more strength, 
more power, and more distinction to the state. 

It is impossible and unnecessary to refer in any detail to the 
events of the six j^ears that have gone. They are summed up in our 
complete agreement upon rules of procedure and upon a new educa- 
tion law that will make us secure ; in a great organization of three 
hundred people that was compounded out of two antagonistic or- 
ganizations without much commotion, and that operates without 
friction and is highly efficient ; in the monumental building that 
is well advanced to completion for our accommodation ; in the fact 
that we have administered more than thirty millions of dollars 
without a scandal or criticism ; in the now universally accepted fact 
that we have eliminated all politics from that organization and put 
education above partisanship of whatever kind ; and in the further 
fact, greater than all, that universal comity and good will have been 
established in all parts of the state, and that we are able to see new 
energy and added promise in all that pertains to New York educa- 
tion. 

That we and others concerned have brought out the possibilities 
of good rather than of further confusion that were latent in the 
new law, lends peculiar satisfaction to this quiet election; but the 
significance of it ought not to be obscured by the fact that it has 
been preceded by no canvass, attended by no excitement, and marked 
by no differences of opinion. Wholly regardless of our relation to 
it, this little election is what New York has needed, and what the 
thinking people of the state have hoped for, for a century and a 
quarter. 

New York was the first American state to establish a state edu- 
cational organization. The University of the State of New York is 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATON 173 

the oldest, as it is the most authoritative, state educational organiza- 
tion in the Union. The Board which I have the honor to address 
is encompassed by more maturity, dignity, authority, and entranc- 
ing traditions than any other public educational body that ever sat 
in America. But for one hundred and twenty years the democratic 
thought of the state, often and steadily, refused to give this Board 
any control over the elementary school system. So strong was 
this feeling that it sometimes menaced the very existence of the 
Board itself. The Educational Unification Act of 1904 was the 
first real concession by those who, with or without reason, had 
looked with apprehension upon the possibility of subordinating the 
public schools to the interests or the control of the academies and 
colleges. An expression of confidence in the men who constitute 
the Board of Regents ; the desire to separate all the schools from 
all partisanship ; an admission of the necessity of abating a sepa- 
rateness and ill feeling that had become intolerable; and the hope 
of bringing the quickening influence of the higher schools to the 
uplift of the lower ones, are the factors that may be found in that 
concession. In all this there was some fortunate breaking down of 
the old and tenacious feeling that the higher learning was not prac- 
ticable, and some happy yielding of the old prejudice against a 
directorate that was widely believed, though unjustly, to be more 
aristocratic and theoretical than sympathetic and real. The Board 
of Regents, as well as the democratic and educational progress of 
the state, will feel the influences of this. The higher learning will 
be yet more practical. The sympathies as well as the prerogatives 
of the Board of Regents will be broadened. Out of it there will 
emerge a new purpose to keep the educational system in equilibrium 
while adapting it to all the people and all the situations and voca- 
tions of the state. 

Tomorrow morning it will be twenty-four years since I came into 
this room as State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I have 
always had some special satisfaction in the fact that sixteen years 
ago — ten years before the Unification Act of 1904, and when I ex- 
pected that I would not again have any official relation with New 
York education — I responded to an invitation of the State Con- 
stitutional Convention and advised that the Board of Regents be 
empowered to fill the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction. 
But that office was far removed from the one you have filled today. 
Had the suggestion been accepted, some little headway would doubt- 
less have been accomplished, but nothing like the present possibili- 



174 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

ties would have been opened to us. In other words, the Unifica- 
tion Act of 1904 as we have executed it, and now the new Educa- 
tion Law, extend indefinitely both the legislative and executive 
powers of our educational government. The conflicts and confusion 
are disappearing because functions have been separated scientifically 
and powers are being exercised along rational, distinct, and effective 
lines. As I said to you six years ago, " Bodies legislate : indi- 
viduals execute. We shall invite failure if we confuse legislative 
and executive functions. The people of a democracy prefer that 
policies shall be settled by more than one person ; executive functions 
can not be exercised effectually by a board." I had thought much 
upon it. I knew it meant a new and a necessary departure in the 
educational administration of the state. Your board does not sit in 
judgment upon the individual acts of the Commissioner. It enter- 
tains no appeals from any determination of his. Neither does it 
assume any responsibility for anything he may do or say. It legis- 
lates upon educational policies. It controls the integrity of the 
educational organization. It assumes that the acts of the Commis- 
sioner of Education will accord with the law and the rules and reso- 
lutions of the Board. If they should persistently fail to do so, the 
Board would elect another engineer who could see the lights more 
clearly. If the Board is not responsible for what the Commis- 
sioner says or does, so long as he keeps within the law and the 
declared policies of the Board, so the Commissioner is not re- 
sponsible for the action of the Board. He is to keep his right of 
expression and exercise it with deference, but he is to accustom 
himself to the duty of an executive. The duty of an executive is 
the execution of the law. If the Commissioner has views upon 
questions of policy and expediency, as he ought to have, he is bound 
to express them, and to express them even more freely to you than 
to others, but when you have voted he is to carry your action into 
effect. I have no mental reservations about this. If the pending 
education bill becomes a law, and so far as we safely may until it 
becomes a law, the Board of Regents will freely exercise legislative 
power and directory authority over all of the state's educational 
activities. What you do you will do by resolution and write it in 
your journal. That will make the chart by which the Commissioner 
will try to guide the ship. He will carefully and cheerfully observe 
it. 

The Commissioner of Education will have the initiative about all 
appointments. He will promote the spirit as well as observe the 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATON 175 

letter of the civil service laws, and he will respect, so far as prac- 
ticable, the opinions of all concerned about the character and com- 
petency of public service. You will have the approval of all ap- 
pointments. You will also have joint control with the Commis- 
sioner over the organization of divisions in the Education Depart- 
ment, and in the classifying and assignment of work. So you will 
exercise a large measure of control over the integrity, the respon- 
siveness, and potentiality of the Department. But whatever you do 
you will do as a Board. The present members of the Board have 
never shown any disposition to do things which a Board as such 
can not or should not do, and it is to be hoped that all future mem- 
bers will be guided by your excellent example. Administrative free- 
dom is just as vital as legislative freedom, or judicial freedom, or 
teaching freedom, or any other kind of freedom. Within his 
sphere the Commissioner of Education is to be just as free as you 
are in yours, or as the Governor of the state is in his. 

It is so not only because it is good policy that it should be so, 
but because the law arranges that it shall be so. The office which 
you have filled today finds its standing and its attributes in the 
law. Its beginnings go back an hundred years to a time when no 
other state thought of such an office. Long years ago it was made 
a judicial office. It construes the school laws and determines what 
acts are within or without the laws. Its determinations of such 
matters can not be called in question in the courts or in any other 
place. But as the Legislature may amend the laws so as to avoid 
or change the construction which the Commissioner might put upon 
them, so the Board of Regents may do the same as to all acts over 
which its legislative authority extends. Wholly apart from this, 
the office inherited much in the way of usage and tradition from its 
predecessors, the office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and 
that of Secretary of the Board of Regents. I fondly hope that in 
the last six years it has grown greater than either or both of those 
were. But it is far from its maximum of influence and its possibili- 
ties of accomplishment. There are no upper limits in such work as 
ours. 

I used to hear it said in Illinois, and I have heard it suggested 
here, that the Board might think differently in some ways about the 
standing and the independence of the executive office if satisfied 
that the present incumbent would live forever, or if it could be 
known what kind of a successor there would be. That is compli- 
mentary but unconvincing. The office of Commissioner of Educa- 



176 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

tion in New York is a great office, the office of greatest educational 
possibilities in the United States. Not at the expense of any man ; 
not by the diminution of any other office; only by making it use- 
ful and influential, I am going to make it just as much greater as 
I can. That is to be done not by any self-aggrandizement, not by 
trying to make it a stepping-stone to something else, not by limit- 
ing and harassing other people, but by making the most of every 
other office, and by getting the most out of every individual in any 
way related to it. It is to be done by uplifting the Board of Regents ; 
by giving the utmost freedom to each Assistant Commissioner, each 
Director, each Chief of Division, every worker in the Department 
no matter how high or how humble his station ; and by rendering 
every possible service to every organization and every person in 
the state who has any interest about self-culture or any concern 
about general welfare. 

You have the filling of this office. You have the shaping of the 
policies it is to follow. You have ample power to keep it from 
mistakes. That is enough. I am not to limit the growth of this 
office because of the possibility of your making a mistake when you 
elect another Commissioner of Education. The time might come 
when there would be even as much trouble about getting the right 
Regents, as the right Commissioner. The law provides that the 
Commissioner " may be elected without regard to the place of his 
residence, whether it be within or without the State of New York." 
I am proud to recall that that was put in so that I might be elected. 
It may possibly be of interest to you again. It is not likely that you 
will have to go outside of New York, but if there is need you may. 
You may go wherever you will in all the broad world. It implies 
the presumption of which I am not guilty, or the indifference with 
which you have never been charged, to doubt that you will find a 
greater man when the occasion comes. And whether there be com- 
fort in it or not, I tell you that I am going to make the task just 
as difficult for you as I can. If I can raise the office of Commis- 
sioner of Education to a plane where the people will expect much 
of you, and will give you trouble if you do not search far and ex- 
ercise soundly the free discretion which you have, when it is to be 
filled again, then one of the great ambitions of my life will have 
been attained. 

We have a finely organized, even a unique, system of public edu- 
cation in New York. It is firmly established in the history, the ex- 
pectations, the confidence, and the law of the state. It has great 



ELECTION AS COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATON 1 77 

possibilities. We have proved that we can work together to de- 
velop the possibilities of good rather than of evil that are in this 
system. We will go on working together. We have now passed 
the trial stages of this movement. We will go on with confidence 
and courage, without too much sentiment and without hesitation. 
We will have as little foolishness as possible, and there are too 
many of us to have any foolishness much prolonged. Of course, 
there will be mishaps and mistakes now and then, but we will try 
to accomplish so much that the mistakes will not be very conspicu- 
ous. We will help one another in leading all men and women in the 
state, and in all the states, to believe that the New York Educa- 
tion Department is without a peer. We will try to compel all men 
to see that the New York system of education holds out the equal 
chance to every one in the state, and also lifts the plane of intelli- 
gence and enlarges the free intellectual power of the mass, above 
any other system of education in the world. 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 

President Thiving, Gentlemen of the Board of Trustees, Ladies 
and Gentlemen, and, more particularly, you, Young Men and 
Women of the Class of 1910: This is a radiant scene. It is a scene 
which is almost peculiar to this country. There is no more fas- 
cinating spectacle than a college class on a Commencement morning 
in June, waiting for the degrees which they have earned in an 
American university. You have come from every walk in life; 
you are young and in ruddy health ; you have minds that are keen 
and have been somewhat trained in one of the great schools of 
the land; you have hearts that are both sympathetic and cour- 
ageous; you have ambitions that have been a little seasoned by 
rebuff's and are yet wholly undaunted ; you are ready for work and 
looking for achievement. Therefore you arouse the interest and 
challenge the admiration of the world. 

What is said to you, or about you, is not empty compliment. It 
may be impulsive, but it comes from substantial impulses. It is 
sincere. It flows from feelings which you will understand some 
day better than now. There is no one against you. All the world 
wishes you well. The full, free, open chance of American youth 
is yours. Good wishes and genuine hopes, quite as much as plaud- 
its and presents and congratulations, are yours today. 

But the world will not carry you upon its hands for long. You 
will have to assume the responsibilities of your own characters. 
You will have to make your own places. Your characters will 
have to advance against resistance : they will have to withstand 
assaults without much snivelling or wabbling. If they are of the 
kind that can do that, the places which you will make for your- 
selves will be both respectable and secure. 

As you go down out of this Commencement hall you will turn 
your faces to a busy world; one that throbs with energy and spirit, 
in which the prizes are many and the competitions sharp; one in 
which the accidents do not count as much as some people think ; 
one in which the trained, and seasoned, and genuine, and balanced, 
men and women will make the largest places and gather the most 
fruits. Your relatives and friends, certainly those who have had 
a part in your training, have little disposition to urge unwelcome 
preachments upon you, but they can not help wondering what the 
world contains for you. 

f ; ; 

Address at the commencement exercises of Western Reserve University, 
Cleveland, Ohio, June 16, 1910. 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 1 79 

The world sets up different standards of success, but by no one 
of them will you succeed ill equal measure. A generation from now 
you will be at the full of mature development, and then you will be 
upon very different planes. No one can tell now which of you will be 
in the lead. Some of you will exert a greater influence and gain a 
richer share of the world's respect and rewards than others. Some 
of you will make more of life for yourselves and for all about you 
than others will, but we know that no one can now tell which of 
your number they will be. 

My thought for you today is that God has created the world 
in equipoise, and that that life will become the richest, will reach 
the furthest and accomplish the most, which obeys the laws of the 
Almighty and stands in harmonious relations with a universal plan. 

The sun and the planets and their moons, the star-suns and very 
likely the unseen planets and their satellites of other systems to a 
number and a distance where human vision, aided by mechanical 
devices and supported by the known laws of matter and by mathe- 
matical computations, fades into uncertainty and where human com- 
prehension loses itself in chaos — all balance each other and hold 
to their courses in eternal and infinite space. 

And with our own world, and with other worlds, the days and the 
seasons alternate steadily. Temperature and precipitation average 
alike. The tides rise and fall. So it lias been always. The rivers 
run to the sea, but " unto the place from whence the rivers come, 
thither they return again." " The wind whirleth about continually, 
and the wind returneth again according to his circuits." [Eccl. 1 : 
6-7] The soils are decaying as well as producing. The paths of 
nature run into themselves again. Matter moves in cycles and 
under the law of equipoise. 

We know little of light, heat, sound, or electricity, but we seem 
to see that they move in cycles and seek their equilibrium. 

And the great movements of matter, the great periodic forces of 
nature, seem to have relations with the greatest phenomena in life. 
The turning of the earth upon its axis, the circuits of the earth 
about the sun and of the moon about the earth, seem to fix the 
periodicity of the most vital changes in the world's life. 

It may safely be said that the application of the laws of periodic- 
ity and of equipoise has given us the most notable discoveries in all 
of the natural and physical sciences that have enriched the store of 
the world's information. 

And as with matter and with motion and with life, so with 
thought. The history of our race, which has been made and written 



l8o NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

by the world's thought, is but the record of affairs moving in great 
cycles of time. There has been an ebb and flow in the great tide of 
human thought. Civilizations have come and gone. Governments 
have arisen and perished. Inventions and discoveries have run in 
epochs. Marked advances in knowledge and skill have been fol- 
lowed by marked depressions. Great waves of human sympathy 
and great outbursts of human passion have alternated. Peace and 
war have followed each other. 

Let the spirit of a community be in equilibrium, alive and yet 
content, and all is well. It means shelter and food and clothing, 
added strength and greater possessions for all who will work for 
them. It sets up a common power to secure the rights of person 
and property to all. There is plenty and there is security where 
there is no disturbance and where economic law is given free sway 
and universal application. 

Disturbances of what we have accepted as the regular order only 
prove, as our vision widens, the perfection of the equilibrium which 
is beyond our ken. The seeming irregularity of a planet indicated 
the existence and led to the discovery of another planet ; and now 
the perturbations of that other planet indicate that there is another, 
and possibly still others, beyond. 

We have recently had a brilliant and heroic visitor in our skies. 
His dimensions are mentioned in millions and his course in billions 
of miles. His velocity is more than forty miles to the second. He 
has not only whirled around our heavens, but he has dashed across 
the orbits of this earth and the other worlds of our planetary sys- 
tem. He has been here before. He comes about every seventy- 
five years. He has observed the period so closely that we know he 
has periodicity, and yet, perhaps stranger than all, the period has 
varied as much as two years in the last three centuries. That such 
a vast body should come out of and then return into infinite space 
for such a period amazes us, and his known irregularity amazes us 
even more. There is but one refuge. Halley's comet like all else is 
within God's infinite law of equipoise. If the earth and sun and 
planets and stars and moons, and the comets, are all governed by 
that law, what can justify our rebelling against it? 

There is something stupendously grand and solemn about this 
unceasing, onward, balanced, periodic, rhythmic motion of every- 
thing in matter and every energy in life. We are foolish if we do 
not see that it is all under the control of a Power above and out- 
side of ourselves, and all pursuant to universal law. If it is grand 
and solemn to see that all created things are obedient to a law 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE l8l 

that is broader and higher than the things of our world, it is still 
more so to realize that we should face chaos and must abandon hope 
in the absence of such law. In the very fact that the routine is un- 
ceasing and progressive we find satisfaction and inspiration. It does 
open to our weak vision the uncertain pathway of human progress. 
It gives confidence in a higher destiny and strengthens the purpose 
to reckon with it. 

If all matter and all energy and all thought are subject to God's 
omniscient law of equipoise and advancement, a single being can 
not hope to disregard it and still be successful in the small things 
of life. The law is constant: man is the free agent and the un- 
certain factor in the problem. 

Individuals who start from the same point, with even oppor- 
tunities and purposes equally correct, come out at very different 
ends. Few mark out a precise roadway in life and no one precisely 
follows the road which his mind may have outlined. There are 
elements in ourselves which we do not know and can not estimate, 
and time will find us in environing conditions which time alone can 
reveal. Plans will miscarry and expectations be disappointed. It 
does not necessarily follow that the departure from our plan will be 
the worse for us. What you now think you most want you are 
more than likely not to get. This is not a reflection upon the in- 
experience of youth. At no time in life can we decide with entire 
confidence what is most desirable in the future. It is said that in 
early life General Grant cherished the hope of becoming a physi- 
cian, and always regretted that the hope was not realized. The fact 
is, we can not see and we do not know about things in advance 
of us. Failure to accomplish an undertaking has more than once 
opened the way for something of vastly more importance. Many 
lives are barren of results because many men insist upon predicating 
present action upon events which are a long way in the future and 
which they can not foresee. They are so cautious, or so cowardly, 
that they accomplish nothing. We are to make the best plans we 
can, seek to make every cycle of our lives an advance upon the 
last one, and take with composure whatever may come to us. If we 
can take what comes with equanimity it is quite possible that we 
shall obtain more rather than less than we now expect. It is more 
than likely to be so if we build our characters to balance themselves - 
and then keep them in equilibrium with the people and the con- 
ditions about us. 

Find the point of equipoise between seeing and aiming and do- 
ing. Some spend their lives in gaping; others aim high but seldom 



l82 NliVV YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

hit the target; still others are always doing, without either looking 
or aiming, and of course they are continually blundering. To me 
the most trying ones of all are those who mean well and do ill 
continually, as some good people seem prone to do. Some men de- 
liberate so wisely and so long that they never get to the point of ex- 
ercising their energies, and the powers which make for advance- 
ment shrink to the vanishing point for lack of use. Some look 
wise and say little, and though they are dreadfully trying at times, 
it must be confessed that others who know more and are stronger 
than they, would often fare better and be less trying by following 
their example. The life that accomplishes things is the one that has 
ideals, sees with what eyes it has, exercises the judgment it pos- 
sesses within the limits of time which the occasion allows, and goes 
ahead doing something. And the life that accomplishes the most 
things is the one that has the noblest ideals, is trained to the 
greatest acuteness of vision, is capable of the most rational reason- 
ing, has the greatest courage and force of execution, and above all 
is able to keep these high endowments in equilibrium. 

Live in harmonious and enthusiastic relations with your work. 
There is work of some sort for every one to do. If one has not 
adjusted himself to some sort of work, there is something the mat- 
ter. We may not find work exactly to our liking ; indeed, there are 
people who find it difficult to fall in love with any kind of work. 
But you will be at fault if you do not in a little time find congenial 
employment. Work is largely what we make it, and, if we make 
of it all we may, it commonly leads to something better, for the 
world honors the man who is in love with his work and who is 
proud of it, no matter what the work may be. Fortunate indeed 
is the man who has the opportunity and the disposition to work; 
who does not make the hours tedious by watching the clock; who 
does not grieve for lack of moneyed reward, but who works for 
work's sake and finds the hours speeding cheerily on, because of 
the satisfaction he feels in producing results. Do the work that 
comes to your hands, and assume other and yet other things to do. 
Dwell not so much upon the wages as upon health and knowledge 
and skill to do more and better work. The rewards will take care of 
themselves more surely than in the case of the man who spends so 
much energy in bringing about an increase in wages that he has 
little life and pride in the prosecution of his work. 

Be prudent, but do not be overprudent, as we commonly under- 
stand the word ; at least see that prudence does not develop into 
cowardliness and meanness. "A penny saved is a penny earned " 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 183 

is a maxim which is not true, and one which has stood in the way of 
many a man's success. The penny earned and rightly used is what 
makes wealth. In many an instance the penny saved is a dollar lost. 
Indeed, in many an instance the penny saved is public respect and 
fraternal regard lost. 

There is wealth which is not measured in gold, and yet is better 
worth the having. At the end of life some men have plenty of 
money and no culture of mind or heart; and some have culture 
and no money. But there is substantial wealth in both. They 
should supplement each other. It is pitiable to have culture and 
lack the means to gratify it ; and it is lamentable to have money 
and so lack in culture that you do not know what to do with it, 
and hold it as a miser or spend it like a fool. It is infinitely better 
to so manage matters that you are likely to have wealth of both 
kinds. 

It is not always wise to avoid all risks. He who waits for sure 
things that are of much moment is liable to lose the greatest oppor- 
tunities and die while yet waiting. We have no right to involve 
others, but we have the right to weigh some chances against our 
own individuality. The student who has health and mental capacity 
but no money, but who borrows money to gain an education which 
he knows he wants, and who insures his life to secure the lender, 
does not do an unwise or an imprudent thing. The man who accum- 
ulates is the man who assumes obligations and takes risks with 
the confidence that he can work them off, as ordinarily he does, 
rather than the man who spends his time in saving his money while 
denying his body and his mind and his heart the nourishment they 
need. Forty years ago twin Quaker brothers purchased the site for 
a summer resort in the heart of the mountains that give beauty and 
grandeur to the western shore of the Hudson river, and paid for 
it a moderate sum, which, however, was ten thousand dollars more 
than they were both worth. Since then they have refused overtures 
running into the millions for their property. Beyond that, they 
have made the mountains teem with life and have given health and 
unspeakable pleasure to multitudes. Even more than that, they 
have called people there in conference, whose declarations have 
affected the acts of nations and modified the thought of the world. 
The man who sets and keeps the world's wheels in motion and 
makes of himself a leader in our common humanity, while he lifts 
us all to a higher plane, is not the man who waits until movements 
are successful and then tries to board the train and take advantage 
of what some one else has done, but rather he is the man who sees 



184 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

and feels and acts, asking only for an even chance, in the con- 
fidence that his own weight and energy will accomplish the rest. 

Let the will balance the emotions. If we throttle the feelings 
we are little more than mechanism refined: if we become hysteric 
we defeat our own desires and make of ourselves a laughingstock. 
We are to nourish and restrain them. He who lacks integrity of 
feeling lacks effectiveness of action. It is spirit that lifts the indi- 
vidual and drives the world ; but it is spirit that is guided by intelli- 
gence and controlled by the will, which makes headway and gains 
respect. 

Bear disappointment with composure, and affliction with forti- 
tude. The noise one makes does not measure the sorrow he suf- 
fers. Let the hatreds be outlawed by a short statute of limitations. 
After a hard blow straighten up as soon as may be and readjust 
yourselves to the new conditions as quickly as you can. Carry your 
steadiness with you and do not leave your civility and generosity at 
home when you move among the people and push into the activities 
of the world. 

General Horace Porter tells us that in the Battle of the Wilder- 
ness a Confederate general, Edward Johnson, was captured. He 
showed so much character that the officer at the battle front, into 
whose hands he had fallen, gave him a horse and directed him im- 
mediately to General Grant's headquarters. He had been in the Mili- 
tary Academy at West Point with General Mead, and in the Mexican 
War with General Grant. He was disheartened in spirit, exhausted 
in body and bedraggled with the stains of battle. He did not forget 
to take his civility and his power to adjust himself along with 
him when he went, a prisoner of war, up to the headquarters 
of the Commander-in-Chief of the Union armies. As he dis- 
mounted and saluted, the highest officers in the army grasped his 
hand warmly and expressed sympathy with their distinguished 
prisoner. Grant referred to their last meeting and the Confederate 
replied respectfully and expressed chagrin at the present situation. 
Grant said : " It is one of the fortunes of war : it may be me 
next time," and with his own hand he placed a chair near the fire, 
offered a cigar as a token of peace, and added : " Be seated, and 
we will do all in our power to make you as comfortable as we 
can." General Johnson accepted the proffered courtesies with 
" Thank you, General, thank you. I knew you would be civil to 
me, but your kindness surprises and sustains me." After pleasant 
conversation about old times and the chances of war, he was given 
another horse and sent back to the base of supplies, and that time 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 185 

he took with him the respect and good wishes of men whose respect 
then was and thereafter would be of some account to him. 

On the same day General Hancock captured another general 
officer of the Confederacy. Hancock had known him in the old 
army, and rode up to shake his hand. The unhappy man drew back 
and said haughtily: " Under present circumstances Sir, I must 
decline to take your hand." The superb Union officer answered, 
with spirit, " Under any other circumstances, General, I should not 
have offered it," and sent him trudging to the rear on foot, to 
enable him to have ample time to get the mental discipline he needed 
by chewing the cud of sadness and bitterness along the way. 

We may walk or ride, be comfortable or miserable, be respected 
or contemned, just as we are able to control ourselves. 

" There's nothing so kingly as kindness," but it is very unkingly 
to let kindness descend into insipidity. Help your fellow creature 
when you can, if your help will really aid him. Support the weak 
and assist the unfortunate. Remove your hat and extend your arm 
to the aged. Put your shoulder under public institutions which 
minister to the suffering, and those other public institutions which 
promote the higher life of all. 

But remember that the world is cursed with mistaken kindness. 
He who feeds a common tramp at his door only exposes his home 
to danger and supports and propagates pestiferous people without 
helping them. Nothing is more prolific of mendicancy than giving 
support to people who are able to support themselves. First they 
will ask it as a favor, then lean upon it as a necessity, and then 
demand it as a right. 

If you would prolong and multiply your friendships, do not bor- 
row and do not lend except on a business basis and for sufficient 
security. It is true that honor is sometimes adequate security, but 
it is equally true that the man of honor dislikes personal obliga- 
tions or special favors and prefers to insure his friend against loss 
in a way which will surely enable him to realize in the coin of the 
realm. It is well to have it settled in advance whether a transfer of 
value is but the discharge of an honorable obligation which you owe, 
or is a gift to aid a person in whom you are interested or a cause in 
which you believe, or is a loan upon a business footing; for it is 
well to have the credit of giving what you ought, to have the satis- 
faction of giving when a loan is likely to become a gift m any 
event and to permit the other party to retain his entire independence 
if it is but a business loan. In a word, scatter gifts when the spirit 



1 86 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

moves, and try to have the spirit move when it ought; extend 
honors when the opportunity offers ; grant a favor when you may, 
if your favor is likely to help another, but grant it as a boon and 
refuse it unhesitatingly and peremptorily when it is demanded as a 
right, for when you go beyond that point you are destroying your 
own independence and dealing harm rather than good to all the 
persons and all the interests concerned. 

Think now and then of the point of equipoise between personal 
independence and good citizenship. " Independence " seems to be 
born and bred in us. The very word has a rhythmic, musical sound 
to the American ear. Independence and self-dependence are taught 
from the kindergarten to the university. Because our citizenship 
is free and the suffrage universal, we hear talk about every man 
being an " uncrowned king." Political parties seek support on the 
declaration that they care nothing for the view of any other nation. 
Yet we are each but a single fiber of a single strand of a single 
thread of a broad fabric which has been centuries in the weaving 
and which has been slowly put together under the rule of economic 
law. Remember how much all the people and all the things about 
you mean. Recall the family circle, the neighborhood set, the social 
structure, the church organization, the fraternal order, the city, 
state, and national institutions, and see how helpless you would be 
if they were taken out of your life. After all, success is measured 
by the number of friendships, the depth of the sympathy, and the 
extent of the training we get, through our contacts with the people 
and the institutions about us. 

We are not, and in the nature of things we can not be, a law 
unto ourselves. There are obligations between friends, acquaint- 
ances, citizens, which are personal and mutual. We are all subject 
to the common customs, traditions and understandings of the race. 
One wfluo does not know this and act upon it is a social and public 
burden. The organizations, establishments and institutions of the 
civil state spring from the people. The people never ordained them 
to afford us a living, but to supply the opportunities and facilities 
for self-culture, and to give us security in the right to work peace- 
fully and enjoy the fruits of our labor without interference. He 
who tries to reverse the natural order of things and get his living 
out of the organizations and institutions which the people have es- 
tablished for their common good ; he who withholds from them the 
full measure of his enthusiastic support, becomes a pitiable depend- 
ent, a poor if not a bad citizen, and generally a discredited man. 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 187 

Every man who builds a house, paves a street, lays a sewer, mows 
a lawn, starts a factory, stands up for a better school, supports a 
church, cheers for a party, fights for the integrity of the suffrage 
and sternly punishes venality in political life, contributes to the 
common good, and, more surely than in any other way, to his own 
permanent advancement. Don't be a knocker and a pessimist: be 
a builder and an optimist. But, above all, be frank and honest. 
The man who neglects to do these things when he can and 
ought, shrinks into insignificance. Selfishness defeats itself. Have 
an individuality of your own, and as you pass out of this 
university commence a work and a manner of life which in time 
will put the world under obligations to you. Do not spend too 
much time seeking devices to save labor ; do not lay plans to get 
something for nothing; do not deceive yourselves into thinking that 
there may be a road to prosperity and eminence which is not paved 
with anxiety and filled with intelligent and honest toil ; do not sponge 
on fraternal orders ; do not think you are better than other people, 
when you are only narrow and mean ; never tap the life currents of 
civilization ; and never advertise your business on the fair face of 
the flag. 

The world has come to its present state through long centuries 
of wise and heroic effort, as well as through appalling suffering. The 
world's progress and your opportunities and rights are predicated 
upon all this labor and sorrow. Every missionary who has car- 
ried the banner of the cross into the fastnesses of ignorance and 
superstition ; every statesman who has promoted the enlargement 
of the world's civilization ; every soldier who has laid down his 
life to extend the limits of popular freedom and more firmly es- 
tablish the foundations of government by the people under the forms 
of law ; every one who has stood for the integrity of free institu- 
tions ; every ministering angel who has given succor to a suffering 
one ; every one who has quickened intelligence or aroused ambition ; 
every artist who has developed the beautiful ; every scholar who 
has unlocked the truth; every one who has stood for the right 
upon any field or resisted the wrong under whatever guise, has been 
a force in working out the world's regeneration and placed every 
one of us under enduring obligations to him. 

It is the people who have sense enough to appreciate these obli- 
gations, and who have vitality and honor enough to attempt to 
discharge them, rather than the people who are only able to reason 
that the world owes them a living, who must inevitably count most 
heavily and come to be of the most consequence in the world's 
affairs. 



ISO NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

We are not only in debt to the past, but we are dependent upon 
the present and the future. The one who starts in life with the idea 
that he can be independent is the one who soon finds himself under 
a debt so large and with effects so small that he is discouraged 
before the race is half run, and ends it in utter distress and 
humiliation. All of the great and true interests of the world are 
interdependent. I do not lose sight of nature's different gifts to 
different individuals, and I know that they are variable ; but I know, 
also, that the laws of heredity do not determine the success or fail- 
ure of life so much as training and experience do. The habits of 
mind, the trend of the feelings, the scope of the outlook, the dis- 
position and spirit, settle the question ; and these are acquired from 
the people with whom we associate and the circumstances and 
events with which we are in contact. Of course the will plays a 
part in the matter, but the will also is not independent of environ- 
ment and cultivation. The whole world is relative. What we be- 
come and what we acquire we must get out of the people by whom 
and the conditions by which we are surrounded. The success we 
attain will be measured by the clearness and exactness with which 
we understand the relations we sustain to the world in which we 
move. We can not hope for more than that we and our acts shall 
constitute a small and respectable part of the mass of people and 
the round of events which make up the aggregate of humanity and 
give direction and force to the world's activities. That part may 
be unique and it must rest upon a footing of its own in exerting in- 
fluence upon others. But the beauty and strength of individuality 
will depend upon the correct understanding of the fact that he who 
aspires to be a master among men must not only have ideas, but 
ideas which are of advantage to the race; must have tact as well as 
tenacity and courage in advancing those ideas, and above all, must 
become the generous servant of the interests which he would pro- 
mote. 

The writers and speakers who address young people very fre- 
quently compare life to a great battle. I myself have implied that. 
The implication is that force and strategy are the main elements 
which count for success. The simile is often unfortunate and the in- 
ference unsound. The people are not all at war. Those who are waste 
their substance and lose their chances, while their more rational 
associates enjoy the rewards of peace in a serene old age. 
Mere brute force does not govern the world. Perhaps it once did, 
but certainly it does no longer. Despite the pessimists and 
alarmists, the world grows better as it grows older, and intellect 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE 189 

and emotion are the controlling influences in its affairs. Life is a 
struggle, to be sure, but it is a generous rivalry of brain and spirit 
rather than a bitter struggle of muskets and battle ships. 

Success in business is to be sought. It is dependent upon nothing 
more than upon a sound view of the relations we sustain to all with 
whom we casually come in contact. And how likely that view is 
to be an unsound one ! Twenty years ago I was in a jewelry and 
bric-a-brac store in a distant city. The proprietor, behind the 
counter, was a young man of high character and of excellent pur- 
poses. He was trying to get a fair share of the trade of a consider- 
able city, and had succeeded reasonably well. The patronage of 
people of moderate circumstances was quite disposed to run his way. 
There was no good reason why he should not in a little time need 
a larger store, show a richer stock, get the trade of the people of the 
most liberal means, and maintain the foremost establishment of the 
kind in the city. I had known this young man long enough and well 
enough to become interested in him. The door opened and a gentle- 
man entered with whom I was also well acquainted. Mr R. 
was the man of the largest wealth in town. He could have bought 
the building in which we were and the entire stock of goods if the 
value had been a hundred times what it was, and could have given 
his check for it at that moment. He said to the young merchant: 
" I am going to New York this afternoon and expect to sail for 
Europe tomorrow. Upon getting ready I find that the little clock 
I carry in my steamer trunk is out of order. Can't you put it in 
shape for me by the middle of the afternoon?'' " No, we can't do 
it, we have too much on our hands," was the crisp and brittle reply. 
The gentleman was evidently very much disappointed, and saying: 
" I am sorry : I shall be inconvenienced, but shall have to get it 
done in New York in some way," he went out. The young 
merchant turning to me said : " When he wants to buy diamonds 
and bric-a-brac to cost a thousand dollars he goes to New York. 
When he wants a clock tinkered for fifty cents he comes here. I 
could have done it, but I wouldn't please him enough." What a 
false idea of relationship there was behind this refusal and this 
remark! I said plainly: "I think you have made the greatest 
mistake possible. You appear to think that Mr R. owes you some- 
thing, but he does not. You imagine he is bound to come here with 
his trade, but he is not. His wealth has been acquired legitimately 
and he may do what he pleases with it. There would be no an- 
tagonism between him and you unless you made it; but you have 






190 NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

made it. And, unfortunately for you, you are more dependent 
upon him than he is upon you. You have lost the greatest oppor- 
tunity you have had in many a day, or will have in many a day; 
not the opportunity to earn fifty cents, but the opportunity to put 
him under obligations to you. If you had been quick to help him 
about this matter he would have seen and appreciated it, for he 
is keen to see such things. He is quick to see the spirit of young 
men. The time would doubtless come when he would do some- 
thing substantial that would please you. The best thing you can 
do now is to go down to the bank as quickly as you can and say: 
' Mr R. I made a mistake. I was thoughtless and I am sorry. If 
you will tell me where I can get that clock I will see that it is ready 
for you in time.' It may be a little humiliating for you to do this, 
but the mistake has been yours and you ought to accept the 
humiliation; and if you do, you will be a larger man and a richer 
merchant in time than you otherwise will." This is a real incident. 
It illustrates the false ideas which inexperienced or light-headed 
people have concerning those who are larger and stronger than they 
are. I am not asking for obsequiousness to wealth or position. 
Wealth honestly gained ; position acquired by sane living, are al- 
ways entitled to respect, never to servility. Honest service by free 
contract is never servility, and anxiety to accommodate is a factor 
that is vital to a character which deserves to succeed. 

The wise ones of the world have learned, and learned very 
rapidly in these later years, that there is more to be gained through 
agreement than through strife, through combination and construc- 
tiveness than through antagonism and destructiveness. The igno- 
rant very commonly base prosperity upon an absolutely false 
premise. 

The relations of men who hire and men who serve, of men who 
trade together, of lawyer and client, of physician and patient, are 
bereft of their possibilities for both of the parties unless each is 
trying to do the best he can for the other. I am justified in stand- 
ing for my wage or doing what I may to enlarge it, but having 
agreed to accept it for my service I am bound to do, not as little 
as I may but as much as I can for the man who pays it to me. The 
same is true of trade, and of all the relations of life. Any other 
course takes something of what I owe him from the man with 
whom I deal. That is a small matter with him: it is a large one 
with me, for it degrades and debauches me. It keeps me from 
the habit of doing the best I can and making the most of myself. 



THE LAW OF EQUIPOISE I9I 

It accustoms me to meanness and inures me to dishonesty. It is 
the hard rule of actual compensations. It is the law of equipoise. 
It is to be hoped that you have long before this balanced the 
fundamental principles of our political system with the inevitable 
facts of all rational life. Uphold and extend the cardinal prin- 
ciples of our republican system, while you strengthen the bonds 
which attach you to others whose companionship thrills the cham- 
bers of your soul. Reason deliberately and make alliances which 
will be agreeable to your feelings and promote your beliefs. But 
be careful that your associations do not dwarf your minds and 
overthrow your judgments. Because we are specially attached to 
some it does not follow that we must be opposed to others. Culti- 
vate the associations which mean the most to you. Take the steps 
which your intelligence must tell you ought to promote your indi- 
vidual development, but recognize the inalienable rights and secure 
the good opinion of every member of the human race so far as 
you can. If you are servile to the rich, only because they are rich, 
you will be smaller at the end of your life than you are now. But 
so you will be, also, if you refuse to respect the man whose indus- 
try and frugality have acquired wealth. If you are against the 
poor only because they are poor, you show a defect in character 
which must put you out of relations with honorable men. But if 
you are not against indifference and shiftlessness and dissipation 
you also show a defect in character which will cost you the good 
opinion of all people whose good opinion is worth possessing. Give 
sympathy where it is most needed, but give honor and regard where 
it is due. You ought to become leaders ; not merely leaders of 
platoons, but leaders of battalions and brigades and divisions in life's 
army. But you never will, unless you can bring yourselves to 
have the same regard for the man below you as for the man above 
you, provided he is equally loyal in the place in which he is. The 
humble policeman at your door may or may not be as agreeable 
a companion as the superintendent in his office would be, but he 
may be a better citizen and a stauncher man ; and if he is an effi- 
cient officer, if he wears the stripes of honorable service upon his 
sleeve, if he has interposed his life to protect your person and 
secure your home, he is entitled to your support and your esteem. 
Perhaps, and perhaps not, the measure of your esteem for him 
should be larger than that for his superior officer. That is not to 
be determined alone by the titles to the positions which they hold, 
by the salaries which they receive, or by the grade of service which 
they are expected to render. It is to be determined by the character 



19- NEW YORK STATE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT 

of each man, and the intelligence and fidelity with which each seizes 
the opportunity and performs the duty that has fallen to him. 

It is more than certain that the clearness with which you look 
at these things and the feelings which animate your lives in these 
regards, will gauge the measure of respect you will gain and of 
influence you will exert in the coming years. Let no preconceived 
notions lead you away from the path of greatest usefulness, and 
therefore of the greatest honor in the world : let no artificial or 
imaginary barriers keep you from going as far and as high as 
you may. 

Young men, undertake to round out your lives in a way which 
will enable you to feel comfortable in the centers of trade, upon 
the world's high ways, in the ward caucus, in the governor's office, 
in the centers of intellectual and social life, or wherever else you 
may chance to be. 

Young women, be not content to cultivate the graces alone, but 
secure the things which will make you versatile and efficient in 
life, and which will increase the debt the world will always owe 
to sensible and honorable womanhood. 

You will all, of both sexes, find the things that will help you 
most, not in selfishness, not in a narrow life, but in a life which 
knows about the world's affairs, is in close sympathy with all of 
God's creatures, and feels in accord with every self-respecting 
member of the human race. 

It is a satisfaction to believe that each great cycle of the world's 
life leads the race up to a higher plane. As with the physical world, 
so it is with intellectual and moral life. So let it be with you as 
the years turn oft' the periods of your lives. It is said that the 
solar system, perhaps the whole stellar system, is advancing to- 
wards one point — the great center of gravity of the infinite uni- 
verse. Is it not possibly true that the infinite universe of life is 
moving along God's greatest and most wondrous cycle to the point 
of everlasting rest? How do we know, indeed why should we not 
think, that the experiences through which the great human family 
passes are but the beatings of the truth upon the universe of 
thought, and the breakings of the bonds which finally shall set the 
whole race free ; yes free at the great center of infinite rest ? 

May your characters round out and come into perfect equipoise. 
May your stores increase. May you be steady when the strain 
comes. May your influence widen and strengthen. May each suc- 
ceeding cycle of your lives advance you to a higher plane. May 
you take on the multiplying years gracefully. May the end be 
perfect peace. 



